August 7, 2017 โ Not many Americans want to spend the summer processing seafood in Alaska for 16 hours a day, seven days a week, earning $10 an hour straight time and $15 an hour overtime.
But the prospect of working 112 hours and grossing about $1,400 a week โ in a good fishing year โ appeals to workers from countries where the pay for unskilled labor is a good deal lower than $10 an hour.
โItโs very hard to work 16 hours a day, but after three weeks you receive your first paycheck,โ Danica Spasic, an elementary school teacher from Belgrade, Serbia, said about working for a Valdez fish processor on a temporary visa.
In a video posted on YouTube as a recruiting tool for Serbian workers, she talks about how pleased she was to work for Silver Bay Seafoods in 2015 with weekly summer paychecks of about $1,000.
โYou do not want to have day off because in Serbia you cannot earn that amount of money for sure,โ she said.
The workday โ during good fishing seasons โ leaves time for work and sleep but not much else before the long flight home.
She said that the managers of the plant knew that the Europeans wanted the overtime hours and were there to work hard, and โthatโs the reason they allow us to work more than the Americans.โ
In fact, Americans are free to work those same hours for fish processing companies in remote locations on short-term jobs, but many of them have better opportunities closer to home.