HARLINGEN — It was a homecoming of sorts for U.S. Rep. Mayra Flores, visiting the RGV Gin Co., where she said she spent time as a child visiting her father’s workplace.
“This place is very special to me, my family has worked here for many years, my dad actually worked here for many years and I remember as a little girl coming here and walking this area and to see what y’all are going through and finding the people, it just wasn’t like this before, growing up.”
Flores was on a two-day tour of Valley agricultural sites with fellow Republican, U.S. Rep. Glenn Thompson of Pennsylvania. Thompson is ranking member on the House Agriculture Committee, of which Flores also is a member.
“Finding the people” referred to gin manager Brady Taubert’s lament that he can’t hire and keep reliable workers.
“If there’s one thing as a gin manager and somebody who also farms, that there’s something we’re going to have to correct, and it’s this labor situation,” Taubert told the congressional delegation. “I’ll just give y’all a for-instance. I run 13 people on each crew. I’ve turned a whole crew this year because they’ll look me in the eye and say, ‘I can make more at home doing nothing than what you’re going to pay me, I’m just not going to come to work.’
“Or they work a week, ‘this is too hard, I’m going to go back home,’” he added.
Taubert said the workforce issues he’s encountering aren’t just at his gin, but are hitting farmers, the sugar mill in Santa Rosa and other agricultural producers and processors in the Valley.
“I’m fortunate enough we can get an H-2A program,” he said, referring to the federal temporary foreign agricultural workers program. “It’s going to force our hand, I’m going to have to do it, just so I can have reliable help because our workforce down here is unreliable at best.”
Taubert said the change in the available workforce has occurred within the past two years. He said when he started at the gin around 2019, “I had no problem getting help.”
“I’ll give you a for-instance. Five people came in here and it’s, ‘Aw, I need a job, I need money, I need money,’ and didn’t even show up for the first day of work,” he said. “No phone calls, they wouldn’t answer their phones. I mean, it’s a real issue. I’m sure it’s the same with the sugar mill, it’s the same with everybody farming.”
Thompson said workforce reliability, or lack thereof, was a nationwide problem in agriculture.
“We’ve been struggling with our workforce before this plague hit, right? With COVID. To find truck drivers with CDLs … part of it was it seemed like what you incentivize is what you get,” Thompson said. “The first year of COVID, when we didn’t really understand what that pandemic was, all those things made sense and I was proud to support those things.”
Thompson said he raised three sons, “and I figured out pretty quickly what I incentivized, that was the behavior I got.”
“We need to incentivize people to work but we also, when it comes to agricultural, both production and processing sides, we need a better agricultural workforce program,” he said. “I know that’s what we’re dedicated to because for the folks that provide us with food and fiber, they need workforce. We can have great years but without a workforce it’s all for nothing.”
Flores and Thompson visited agricultural producers and processors in San Juan, Mission, Alamo and Donna before finishing Thursday in Harlingen at the gin and the Port of Harlingen.
Flores is locked in a competitive re-election race with Democratic U.S. Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, who after redistricting, decided to run against Flores in the state’s 34th Congressional District instead of the 15th District where he currently holds office.
Just over a week ago, the Cook Political Report, a campaign analysis firm, moved the 34th District race from “leans Democrat” to “toss-up.”
The only polling published on the District 34 campaign comes from RMG Research, conducted over the last week of July, and consisting of 400 likely voters. The poll showed Gonzalez leading with 47 percent to Flores’ 43 percent, numbers that were within the poll’s margin of error.
To see more, view Brownsville Herald photojournalist Denise Cathey’s full photo gallery here:
Photo Gallery: Reps. Flores, Thompson hear tales of workplace woes in Valley
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