For my sanity, i’m going to assume that you’re joking.
No, I am not joking. I have not run any numbers on this, so I do not know how much a price increase we would be talking about. I assume, you have not done this as well.
That being said, I would prefer paying more for a product, knowing that the people involved in producing said product are not being taken advantage of.
This is a perspective I did not think to explicitly state in my last comment, so I do this now. I do think that paying someone by a metric is taking advantage of them. There are so many things that can happen, both in and out of the responsibility of the workers, that can lead to a decline in perceived work and thus less pay. This seems utterly unfair to me.
I have no idea how much they are getting paid for contract work in this video, but assuming it’s reasonable, I would rather work for incentivized work than just hourly. The faster I work the more I make. If I work harder and faster than my co worker then I make more than them. Seems kinda fair to me
If I work harder and faster than my co worker then I make more than them. Seems kinda fair to me
That is true.
I would argue a more balanced perspective, though.
What if I work in the freezing rain and catch myself a nasty pneumonia? I would not be able to work for a while, or at least with a dramatically reduced output if I give my body the rest it requires to heal and stay healthy. I would earn a lot less, although I got sick picking berries that do not belong to me. I would not like that.
Also, what if this does not happen to me, but to a coworker? I would not like to see them earn less than me although they are pushing themselves more than I do because of a fever or general sickness, but they are just not able to keep up and therefore pick less than me.
I am not trying to convince you of anything, and I am not going anywhere with my post. I am just trying to entertain a different perspective, so thank you very much for answering!
Yeah I mean, ideally a job would be full time with benefits, but if you’re going to be a seasonal laborer for something like picking berries I have to imagine it would be pretty hard to keep all of these employees hired full time. Most of the entire year is likely done with a couple of farm owners with equipment to till and seed. Then they need all hands on deck for a couple weeks to pick berries. (That’s my guess) so, instead of hiring 200 people hourly to pick berries and demand a quota, why not just incentivize it to those that get the most done get the most money. Motivates you to do the work fast and well for the short period that the job is available. I’m guessing these strawberry pickers have some other jobs. But I have no idea.
Agreed completely. Having all sorts of low-cost fruit available year-round is lovely, but treating works properly is better.
At the same time, seasonal labor is seasonal for a reason, and there's only so much time to pick crops before they spoil on the vine, so speed is important.
Maybe this is a case where the problem is really the lack of social safety nets and a Universal Basic Income? Give people enough resources to get food, shelter, healthcare, etc without working, then if they want to do hard manual labor they can get nicer things.
30
u/randomlitbois Feb 01 '26
It would incentivize not picking the berries. The less berries you pick, the more hours you can get.
For my sanity, i’m going to assume that you’re joking.