By Sean Ellis
Capital Press
BOISE -- The western sheep ranchers say a growing number of sheepherders are leaving for better jobs without notifying their employer they are quitting.
Sheep ranchers say the problem is critical and they hope any immigration reform effort addresses the issue.
"We're hoping they find a solution," said Boise area sheep rancher Frank Shirts. "If they don't, the western sheep industry is over."
Shirts has had three shepherds who were watching his sheep sneak away without notifying him over the past year. One left during lambing season.
"One morning, they were just gone," he said. "It cost me a lot of money this year and last year."
Most shepherds in the West come from Peru or other South American countries under the H-2A guest worker program.
But an increasing number of them, enticed by higher-paying jobs, are abandoning their duties without telling their employer, Idaho Wool Growers Association Executive Director Stan Boyd told lawmakers this spring.
"We're paying their way in here, then they're just leaving us," Shirts said.
Legislators refused to pass a bill backed by the IWGA that would have made it a misdemeanor for shepherds to abandon their duties without notifying their employer they were quitting.
Boyd said the industry wasn't trying to criminalize the act of quitting, it just wants ranchers to be notified that the person watching their sheep in remote locations is quitting.
Ranchers spend about $2,500 per sheepherder to bring them here, said Weiser area rancher and IWGA President Harry Soulen.
The workers sign three-year contracts to work for a rancher but for many of them, it's just their ticket to get into the country and then find higher paying jobs in other industries.
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