[ale] Off topic - And now, Arizona

[greg.freemyer at gmail.com (Greg Freemyer)]

On Sat, Jul 10, 2010 at 1:24 PM, Jeff Hubbs <jhubbslist at att.net> wrote:
> ?Whenever someone around me gets all wound up about illegals, I ask
> them if they're ready for $10/lb strawberries and chicken more expensive
> than lobster.

I seriously doubt chicken has more than a $2 of labor per chicken.
(More if its not whole.)

Most of the process including feeding is highly automated, and a fast
processing line for whole chickens (not cut-up) can handle
100/chickens a minute, so the butchering is very efficient.  (Max of
50 or so people on that sort of line, so that works out to about 30
man-seconds per chicken to kill it, de-feather, etc.)

It's a very low-margin business, so they want as cheap a labor as they
can get, but even if they had to pay $15/hr it would not be too
expensive to eat.

Now paying car factory union rates of $50/hr would have a bigger
impact, but still not lobster prices.

Greg