03/30/07 Ag employers resource

There have been many times in my life that I wish I could have someone or somewhere to go to for answers. Especially as a parent I've wondered why kids don't come with instruction manuals. But thanks to the efforts of Gregorio Billikopf and the University of California employers in the ag industry have a resource for dealing with sometimes complicated labor issues. It's a website called the Agricultural Labor Management site. BILLIKOPF: The Agricultural Labor Management website has hundreds of pages, lots of information; books that you can download in both English and Spanish. Billikopf is a Labor Management Farm Advisor with the University of California and Visiting Professor of the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences of the University of Chile. He says the website is not designed as a job market. BILLIKOPF: It is not a place where you can come and find workers and workers can find jobs. The site is one to basically help agricultural enterprises to better manage employees, to find ways to hire people that work well, to design incentive pay programs, if people need to know how to fire an employee they will find here lots of suggestions on how to discipline or terminate an employee and how to deal with situations where people are not getting along. So basically the web site is an in-house tool. The Agricultural Labor Management site is full of tips, guides even full seminars on managing labor. BILLIKOPF: It includes a one and a half hour seminar on negotiation skills. It includes another seminar on empathic listening, how to really listen. It includes a number of seminars also for those that want to learn Spanish so they can talk to their workers as well as how their workers can learn English and farm employers can go to this website, download these files, make themselves a CD and pass them along for free to their employees or make them so there's no copyright. People are not forbidden from making copies in fact we encourage people to go in and make copies and give them out. To find the website just search for Agricultural Labor Management. Now about that instruction manual for kids& That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.