California overtime law threatens use of grazing goats to prevent wildfires
apnews.com
apnews.com
Turn out California work laws have an exception regarding hourly wage for shepherds due to the special requirements of the job but goat-herders are not currently considered shepherds. An amendment to correct that is being pushed through but has yet to be voted. As of now in its absence, the activity is not profitable anymore.
1. Only hire immigrant laborers to do the work
2. Have exceptions carved out for those laborers so you don't have to pay minimum wage or overtime
Your business was never profitable to begin with. It only succeeded through exploitation of labor.
There is no such thing. (Unless you are enslaving people.) People have agency and are are perfectly willing and able to change jobs if they don't like them.
Hiring someene to do something isn't "exploiting" them.
There are a TON of business that only exist if labor costs are low. When costs rise either those business don't exist or they get automated, or they raise prices.
People tend to get upset when services they need are no longer available, or only available to the rich because they are unafordable.
Consider your own situation, and ask yourself "what must be true for 'I can't afford to change jobs' to also be true?" There are definitely situations where whatever must be true is not that unlikely, and there are definitely employers who use them as leverage against their workforce. Non-compete agreements applied to employees of fast food restaurants, and no-poach agreements between fast food restaurants is a famous example of this.
There's only one thing: I can't find another job.
> There are definitely situations where whatever must be true is not that unlikely, and there are definitely employers who use them as leverage against their workforce.
Except none of that is happening here, they can leave whenever they want. They just don't want to because they feel this is the best job they can get given their particular circumstance.
This is a non-sequitur both in general and in the specific case of the goat herders from Peru. You're aware that ff you're a goat herder, its not like your decades of skill transfer easily to working in a warehouse? This is not "I happened into goat herding 3 months ago, and now I'm not sure I could do better". This is "I've been living around goats since I was born, and actively raising goats since I could walk".
So he's going to make exactly that much money. No one taking advantage of him, they are offering him the payment that matches his ability to do work.
To exploit someone you would have to trick them into agreeing to be underpaid, or force him, or in some way act in a shady manner.
None of that is happening here, they are offering fair payment for the labor.
You originally said this: >There is no such thing. (Unless you are enslaving people.) People have agency and are are perfectly willing and able to change jobs if they don't like them.
>Hiring someene to do something isn't "exploiting" them.
I disagreed, because (as I said), there's a lot of things that are exploitation, even if they clearly aren't chattel slavery.
I also want to draw attention to the distinction between "don't want to" and "can't", because I think you're interpreting the one as the other, when its convenient for your argument.
To point 2: by and large, I'm with you. But the problem stems from the issue that laws meant to protect workers in one operational structure (workers on farms) are being misapplied to a completely different structure. Grazers have more in common with wildland firefighters than fruit harvesters, and not just in the benefit provided to society. There's an argument for raising the salary for a wildland firefighter, but it is truly obscene that the salary of 1 preventative goat herder is potentially double the salary of 1 wildland firefighter. Granted, the cost of the goat herder is probably still less than a crew of firefighters, but if the perverse outcome of this is that it is in fact cheaper to risk the lives of firefighters, residents, livestock, and wildlife than to pay for 400 goats and 1 shepherd, then I'd argue that the worker protection laws failed.
Or is it just way cheaper?
1. Escaped goat. Goats are amazing climbers and there is really not a fence invented that can defeat them if motivated. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkuNn8iXOwM
2. Predator attack. Many grazers use livestock guardian dogs, but it happens.
Speak for yourself. If my job insists on forcing me to be (1) awake, (2) sober, and (3) within cell reception I most certainly expect to be paid for those hours, since clearly that is not MY time.
Why we as a profession allow for "free labour" by being on call escapes me. No, the salary I got paid wasn't for being on call, it was for doing my normal 9 to 5 functions as a specialist.