Every track I have been on has rooms for backside employees. (All in the Northeast, standardbred, thoroughbred, and Arabian). They are tiny, hard to heat and cool, and are not anything desirable.
I can guarantee you that most here would not want to live there. I know I would not.
Can we rephrase this to:
It sucks that charging sufficient board in many areas is difficult so it’s hard to pay people a living wage let alone what they are worth.
The issue with living on property means barn owners/trainers tend to rely on workers to be available 24/7.
I have done the care myself, as well. However, our society is not set up for individuals to dedicate an hour + each day to care for an animal at a secondary location from their home and place of employment. It isn’t realistic or reasonable to expect the average horse owner, a middle aged individual who works full time and commutes on average 30min+ to the barn (many of whom also have children) to go to the barn each day to care for their horse. I anticipate the rebuttal will be, what about coops? Those have their own set of issues as many can attest to.
It’s also unreasonable to expect barn owners to complete the care themselves, though many do. My boarding barn has 30+ horses. My BO does night check and several of the feedings. She also teaches numerous lessons and has a few horses in training. She doesn’t have the time in the day to clean 30+ stalls. I can imagine most mid to large size operates being run entirely by the BO. Again it’s not realistic.
For the pay more aspect. How much should be paid? My BO pays $20/ hr in our LCOL area. I think that’s a great wage for the labor. Do I want everyone to make enough money in every job to comfortably afford the life they want to live? Yes, but again that’s not realistic. She did not have anyone other than Hispanics interested in the groom roles. I truly have no idea how much she would need to pay to attract other individuals. Many other farms pay $15/hr and have issues with retention when employing Americans. As others have said they are more often unreliable or have issues following instructions.
I don’t have a realistic solution. Paying more sounds easy and realistic enough, but as others noted our industry is already struggling. Here in my area, we’ve lost at least 6 large operations and a few smaller operations in the past 5 years. If labor costs are exponentially increased, many boarders (myself included) will be priced out. With more people priced out, more barns will close. I’d love to be entirely wrong but I don’t see how the industry can afford (as a whole) to “pay to play” more than we already do. Especially when the effects will be felt in other areas of life as well.
For the record - I am staunchly against the exploiting of undocumented workers. No one should work a manual labor job, especially one that is inherently dangerous as is the case with horses, for peanuts and absolutely no one deserves to be treated poorly by their employer or anyone else. I am not speaking to those situations, I speak only to the cases where the workers are treated well and paid a reasonable wage.
If by “difficult” you mean that fewer people will pay the higher board and barns won’t be as full and may have to close, yes.
If by “difficult” you mean that the BO feels bad charging so much, then no. It’s incumbent upon the BO to pay/treat workers respectfully and charge what needs to be charged to do that.
(Not picking on you, just pointing out that people need to stop feeling bad for charging what it costs to run a barn)
This is really a bummer, because I agree that horses are already a “rich” person’s hobby, but unfortunately I think this is just what has to happen. I’ve had quite a few people imply that I charge “too much” but I’ve run the numbers and double checked with other BOs in the area - that’s just how much it costs. Unfortunately that means fewer people can afford to have horses when all BOs start charging appropriately.
I don’t feel picked on!
I do mean both. Although I totally get the math, I also feel for barn owners who want the best for the horses in their care, but also know that their owners may be getting hit hard by the economy and want to try to do what they can to allow those owners to continue to get the best care possible. Understanding the math, and I do, and saying, and I do!, that BO’s need to charge appropriate rates is one thing. But, I can still feel for those that want to continue providing care for the horses and people they have as their customers. I don’t think they are making the right decision, but I do understand how making the right one can be very difficult for many.
Totally agree. We’ve had a few closures here and I try to offer the best in care and lifestyle that I can, so it does suck to hear someone say “well I’d love to bring my horse to you for more turnout but I can’t afford it.” 
Thank you for taking the time to write that helpful, informative post! I really appreciate it and I want to do everything I can to protect people from deportation.
When I was a kid in California, I learned how much undocumented immigrants did to make the economy go 'round. Today, I watch people complain about the cost of things and also about all the “illegals” without realizing how this underpaid group makes them able to afford so much of what they have.
In a couple of cases (one in California and a better one in Greenwich, CT) I saw owners of small, private barns hire immigration attorneys to get their loyal grooms US citizenship. I worked for someone in Oregon who also had an undocumented man working for her as a groom (with a family and kid in need of health care, and he had been in the US for more than a decade, not entirely by choice and trying to just stay under the radar). I suggested that, in addition to pay, she help him get citizenship and health insurance for his kid… and she did! Good on this BO! But I’m also glad I saw this done so that I knew to suggest it.
Again, I can’t stand to think of wealthy people just worried about how their sport might be disrupted when they could help instead.
Exactly. I shut down one of my client’s rants one day by pointing this out. I have a friend who is a head groom who posted something the other day about “is it safer in the USA with the threat of ICE, or at home in Sinaloa with the cartel?”
Why are American barns seemingly reliant on undocumented workers, when Canadian barns don’t seem to have that reliance (I assume there are exceptions, I just haven’t seen it)?
Are business models that different?
There are a lot of us who do not rely on undocumented workers in the states too!
My first guess on that is because Canada does not share a border with Latin America.
Canada doesn’t border Mexico and doesn’t have the job pool that the US has come to rely on.
I’ve seen barns offering $20 an hour plus health care plus overtime and vacation pay and only able to hire someone that ended up having stalking charges filed against them.
But I’ve also seen barns (including some big name barns) hiring grooms/barn help and expecting them to work 6 days a week 12 hours a day. Even if you aren’t doing hard labor 12 hours a day, it can be really hard to have a life to live if you’re pretty much on call.
This is what I have seen too. You almost need to consider two shifts, or full time + part time guys to avoid burnout.
On the flip side, I’ve seen people complaining that part time or half day/morning shift barn shifts aren’t worth the time/gas/pay so who knows.
I did see a teen ager asking for $15 PER STALL because she could “make money elsewhere.” A barn owner pointed out that depending on how many horses they had at the time the teen would be making 75 to 100k a year. Dirtier stalls would cost more of course.
Hiring stall cleaners isn’t as easy as hiring for a fast food joint. The pay can be higher but transportation is an issue and working with animals and machinery is another.
There are two threads currently discussing worker shortages for different reasons. In one the poster was saying that the pay could be extremely high (300k) because of all the overtime. But who wants to be forced to work so much overtime you don’t have a home life? And then I see posts where some barn workers are forced to work six days a week for low pay. If we take away the pay equation and look at the hours we can see both situations can be harmful. One of the big draws for a particular job is work / home quality. When you’re made to work long hours for whatever reason it is bad for the employee.
Where am I going with this? Cripes I don’t know. I was in Spokane WA the other day and there was a feeling of unease among some rescue workers. Locally they know several pockets of undocumented people and they are worried for them 
I think the biggest thing for avoiding burnout is working conditions. Not only do you need to be paid decently, but it helps if the barn owner/manager and clients are good to you and reasonable. The barns I know who cycle through employees and can’t keep them are run by people who are awful to work for. Their clients cycle through as well, because nothing is worth dealing with crazy long-term. The barns I know who are decent bosses have long-term help. Going to a manual labor job to be screamed at and cussed? No one is going to stay. Surprise!
Of course not everyone who finds it hard to find labor is a bad boss, but many are. And solid workers tend to stay with good bosses when you do find them.
I think a lot of it has to do with proximity to the border, which influences the labor pool, and the political landscape.
Of the three boarding and training barns I know in my area (north/central Arizona) none of them employ undocumented workers, including where I ride. All of the workers are white older teens and young adults from the local area. This is a solidly red, conservative area with a lot of businesses that rely on using E-Verify (I know that can be faulty).
Up here there is a constant turnover of barn help. Pay is generally $25 an hour for cleaning stalls and picking up manure from corrals and paddocks. In each of these three barns, the job doesn’t include any horse handling or turning out, no blanketing, etc. For the most part, I think the physical aspects of the job are more demanding than expected. Plus it’s boring. It’s solitary. And there’s nothing glamorous about telling your friends that you shovel poop for money. In a short time they realize they’d rather work at the Dollar Store or Sonic Burger.
South of me, in the Phoenix/Scottsdale/Tucson area, there are large horse facilities that rely on Hispanic workers. Some I know have workers who live on-site in casitas with their families. Are they undocumented? I have no idea.
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