Tag Archives: H-2B workers
Shorthanded – Shrimp industry fears worker shortage
The Texas shrimp industry is celebrating a handful of recent legislative wins while also dreading next year’s shrimp season if changes aren’t made to the seasonal foreign worker visa program.
The Brownsville-Port Isabel shrimp fleet starts this season, which opens today, without enough workers. Andrea Hance, executive director of the Texas Shrimp Association, estimates that 70 percent of the fleet’s 140 trawlers will head out to the Gulf shorthanded. >click to read<10:51
No free market in Maryland crab picking
I don’t doubt how productive and valuable Mexican immigrant crab pickers in Maryland are. Their bosses say they’re the heart of the crab industry. But upon closer inspection, it seems the seafood companies don’t really think this important work is worth a fair wage. The companies have lobbied tenaciously to make sure that the legal and regulatory framework of the H-2B visa program allows them to legally underpay their workers compared to what they would have to pay to attract workers in the free market …Maryland crab is delicious, if you can afford it. At $30 to $50 per pound, it’s certainly not cheap. That’s why I was curious to know just how much these H-2B workers were valued by their employers. click here to read the story 11:57
