Volume 6, Number 1, Winter-Spring 1997
Content on the Agricultural Personnel Management Program (APMP) Internet site and links to other sources continue to expand since our last report in Labor Management Decisions (Fall 1996). Educational articles, legal and government guides, teaching materials, data bases, research reports, newsletters, advice, and other resources from APMP staff are available through the Web more readily and broadly than ever.
Agricultural managers and others can use their computers to draw from a rich and growing stock of labor management references on such topics as employee recruitment and selection, supervision, farm workplace safety, wages and incentive pay, discipline, interpersonal relations on the job, and labor law. Of special interest to many farm employers and service providers are frequently updated links to government agency publications, databases, and compliance tools. Educators can download slide sets, cases, and exercises assembled by APMP staff. Information is available in Spanish to interested visitors.
As resources are added to the APMP site, they are highlighted on the "News and Current Site Selections" page. One recent addition, for example, is the final California pesticide safety regulations, as revised and officially adopted early this year in accord with federal Worker Protection Standard requirements. Other featured links take visitors to information on California's ergonomics regulation; the concept of "joint employment" under MSPA; the federal and state minimum wage increases; model Injury and Illness Prevention Programs; and pesticide safety ‹ all 11 leaflets in the state agricultural Pesticide Safety Information Series (PSIS), in English and Spanish.
APMP project reports, back issues of newsletters (including this one, as well as Steve Sutter's Agricultural Personnel Management Program Newsletter), and other publications, previously available only in printed form, are gradually coming on-line. Among features soon to be added by our expanded website development team are a visitor registration and comment form, an automatic site-update notification service, a search engine, and a calendar of events.
Visitors are encouraged to contact staff through the website with comments, questions, and suggestions. Through the "Electronic Farm Call" page, people throughout the state can reach any academic member of the APMP group or link to the overall DANR directory. Anyone interested may join AG-HRnet, a group sharing announcements, practical questions, and views on various topics in agricultural human resource management. Likewise, the site includes a gateway to the WPS-Forum, an active discussion network focusing on the federal worker protection standard and related pesticide safety regulations. A clickable list of the 109 files in the Forum reference archive provides immediate access to them.
Access to all these web pages is through two interconnected WWW locations: http://are.berkeley.edu/APMP/ and http://www.cnr.Berkeley.edu/ucce50/7grisha.htm.