I recently heard that a farmer with whom I worked a few times harvesting apples was having trouble retaining workers. The laws in Italy are strict. All workers who are not immediate members of a farmer’s family must be registered before they can work. It’s a way of protecting labour rights, though the flipside has been that harvesting is no longer a community-engaged practice but is a corollary of a capitalist system. This means you cannot just go to a labour market and pick up people willing to work. It also usually means that the positions usually attract those from neighbouring countries within the EU for whom the low, minimum wage translates into more currency back home. Some years ago harvesting was done by Polish workers, until they got wealthier. Now it’s done by Romanians and Bulgarians. Coming back to what I heard. The farmer I used to work for, a well-intentioned person whose many pet peeves can definitely rub you off the wrong way, was over-supervising his workers when suddenly one of them decided he simply didn’t care enough to put up with it. He left. Right there and then.