Howard R. Rosenberg
Director, Agricultural Personnel
Management Program
Labor management is not at the top of every farmer's agenda these days. Despite the Gulf war ceasefire, the remaining man-made and natural crises of our day continue to draw more attention on and off the farm. And the great flurry of worry and activity prompted by the 1986 immigration law has settled down, as its provisions have been implemented with no apparent shrinkage in the supply of agricultural labor.
Of the farm managers I have encountered lately who are very concerned about labor management, most, unfortunately, are fixed on questions about compliance with state and federal laws. With all the "have to's" governing employment relations, it is easy to lose sight of the real purpose of labor management, which is to get work done. And that happens not by boning up on legislation or filling out forms but rather by dealing with workers. In structuring work conditions and in personally interacting with employees, farmers make countless labor management decisions every day that affect us all one way or another.
Farm Work, Management, and Results
Amount and types of labor needed on farms vary from commodity to commodity. But human work is critical to all agricultural production, and a substantial part of total production cost goes for labor. Roughly 75 percent of all work on California farms is performed by hired employees. Agricultural wages paid in this state during 1990 approached $3 billion and were more than 20 percent of total production expense.
The use of aggregate economic statistics in policy making and cost-per-acre averages in farm budgeting tends to reinforce a misconception that labor costs are fixed by formula. But costs for labor and other production inputs are subject to human control. Relationships between the amount and effects of wage payments are not at all straightforward. Labor expenses and what they buy can vary substantially, even when part of similar production technologies in the same county. Differently managed farms with the same total wage bill can exhibit great differences in production quantity and quality. An expenditure for labor can purchase quite a range of contributions from employee effort and ideas, just as it can be joined by variable costs associated with worker absenteeism, turnover, accidents, and grievances.
How workers perform is determined by what they can do and what they want to do. Personnel management practices affect both. What growers expect, permit, encourage, support, and reward influences the attitudes and behavior of employees - and of unpaid farm family workers. The same wages can constitute part of a higher or lower quality of worklife for employees. Through its effects on worker performance, then, labor management can contribute to both business results and individual satisfaction in agriculture.
Furthermore, what agricultural workers do on the job has impact beyond the farm gate. Their performance, and thus decisions by which human resources are applied in agricultural production, affect commodity prices and quality, natural resources, and the social fabric of rural communities. When an irrigator with garbled instructions or a gripe leaves the valves open too long, valuable water is wasted and crops may suffer. After a strawberry picker with too many thumbs or an untrained technique fills trays rapidly in order to maximize piece-rate earnings, badly bruised fruit shows up on the market shelf or in the family refrigerator. The excessively rich orchard spray mixed by an uninformed or careless applicator may be a drain on the grower's budget as well as a health hazard to humans on the ranch and perhaps even in an adjacent subdivision.
Nested Labor Issues
People who provide labor, who manage labor, and who look out for the public interest face respectively different though interrelated sets of "labor issues." Individual farm workers decide how and where to seek employment, and whether to accept it if offered. Once in a job they make choices about staying or leaving, exerting themselves physically and mentally, and trying to improve their situations. Workers base these decisions on their own aspirations, needs, and talents as well as how they perceive other available job opportunities.
The reality of those opportunities is determined largely by employers operating, in turn, within their own business and personal contexts. In a sense, agricultural employers and supervisors contend with the same labor issues about content and conditions of work that managers of production always face. They need to organize and elicit human work that turns raw materials into marketable goods and services. Key decisions for farmers start right with choice of crops, production systems, and equipment, which together determine the tasks to be done by people.
From there the challenge of personnel management, simply put, is to employ the most capable people in the tasks and under the conditions that draw their best work. Several types of decisions affect whether capable people are attracted to jobs, how long they stay, and how well they perform. How to formally engage labor - through direct employment, farm labor contractors, or independent contractor agreements - is basic. Other important decisions include what tasks to combine into jobs, where to recruit for employees, and how to select them for specific assignments, orient them to work conditions and performance expectations, help them develop skills, establish pay rates and benefits, deal with problems that arise, and provide for ongoing communication.
A host of public policy decisions inspires and limits the employer's hand. Some of them, such as those on international trade, touch providers and managers of labor indirectly through effects on supply and demand in product markets. Others, more clearly "labor issues," create laws pertaining directly to (1) specific terms of employment (e.g., minimum wages, safety standards, rest periods), (2) interactions between employer and employee (e.g., pre-employment screening, collective bargaining, dismissal), and (3) the supply of labor (e.g., immigration rules, public training, and job search assistance).
Our Center of Attention
These sets of issues are obviously connected. Employer policies (or lack of them) form a major part of the environment for individual worker decisions. Similarly, public policies condition how employers view and cope with the issues at their level. The influence is not, of course, one-way. Employers consider likely worker response to their management practices. Likewise, intelligent public policy anticipates managers' reaction to its incentives, requirements, and restrictions.
Choices at all levels are certainly worth examining. The emphasis in Labor Management Decisions, as in the DANR Agricultural Personnel Management Program, is on those made by farmers and supervisors at the level of the firm. All information and work presented in this publication, though wide ranging, is connected by its relevance to such labor management decisions in agriculture. Our main intent is to expand understanding of the choices farmers make as personnel managers, factors impinging on them, options in management policy and practice, means for implementing them, and their outcomes for various stakeholders.
The core of these decisions is represented by the second column of the accompanying table. Factors that influence them are not only laws and regulations but also production technology, product and labor market conditions, financial status of the firm, employer attitudes and values, tradition, union contracts, and worker interests and needs.
Misunderstandings, conflicts, and waste have resulted from such casual practices as hiring without specifying job responsibilities, presuming rather than screening (pre-hire) for job-relevant qualifications, setting wage rates through an irregular series of individual bargains, and allowing foremen full discretion to recruit, assign work, administer discipline, and resolve problems their own way. Farmers can avoid many problems unilaterally by adopting some basic management tools and techniques to which the APMP provides reference.
The Rest of the Nest
Though the focus here is on management, it will take well-informed, often coordinated efforts of policy makers, managers, and workers to successfully meet the complex of challenges facing agriculture today. By no means will farm managers by themselves be able to cope with all the labor implications of intensified product market competition, abnormally severe weather, new equipment and technologies, large-scale immigration from cultures familiar and unfamiliar to us, swings in the overall economy, environmental protection measures, prospective trade agreements, and social service and physical infrastructures bursting at the seams.
Our program content is therefore enriched by and, we hope, significant to public policy and worker decisions. Contributions to the Agricultural Personnel Management Program, and these pages, ought to be far more diverse than they would have been 20 or even 10 years ago. Your comments and participation are most welcome.
As on McLuhan's "Spaceship Earth," we are not only passengers in the enterprise California Agriculture. We are all crew
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