Farmworkers And Laborers

Job description

Workers will perform assigned duties as instructed by their supervisor. Duties may vary from time to time. Following the Supervisors instructions, the worker will fulfill the following duties:

Pull Plastic: With both hands, grab all plastic and drip tape; remove it from the plant beds or field. Gathering plastic and drip tape to the ends of the field and/or walkways. Repeat process throughout entire field.

Pick Up Plastic: Pick up bails of plastic and load onto truck to be delivered and then unloaded at the designated drop off area. Units covered will be divided by number of workers on the crew times the pay rate.

Stake Pulling (by hand operation): Person removes stakes from ground and places into bundles, straps around bundles and tightens straps before placing on the fields.

Staking (Clean-up): Person removes standing stakes from ground and places into bundles, straps around bundles and tightens straps before placing in designated areas the fields.

Loading Stakes: Labor works as a group and is required to pick up bundles of stake and loaded onto field trucks and unloaded at designated areas of farm.

Harvest Dumper: Worker is required to stand on top of; or on the side of, harvesting equipment and receive full harvest buckets that are being tossed to the harvest dumper from the harvesting employees. Buckets/Harvest container weigh approximately 15-35 lbs. when filled with product and will be dumped into various types of harvesting containers. After harvest dumper receives and empties the contents into the appropriate container; the harvest dumper will return the empty bucket/harvest container to the harvesting employee placing a token (if paid by piece rate) inside the bucket/harvest container for them to receive. The harvest dumper will monitor the cleanliness of the containers and remove any additional vegetation from produce inside the harvest containers and toss unwanted vegetation to the ground. As containers reach full capacity, the harvest dumper will stack, if needed, an additional container (weighing approximately 60 - 80 lbs.) on top of the full container and continue the process.

Harvesting of Tomatoes (Round): Using a 24-quart bucket, remove mature tomatoes from the plant with both hands (also remove calyx and stem from tomato) and place into the bucket. Repeat the process on each plant until the tomato bucket is full. Then lift the bucket and place on your shoulder, stand upright and walk at a brisk pace until you reach the truck with bins. Lift the bucket from your shoulder with both hands and hand it to the person next the bin. The person next to the bin dumps the tomatoes into the bin and returns the bucket with a ticket in it. Save the ticket to keep count of how many buckets you pick. Repeat process.

Farm Equipment operator: Moving farm equipment for harvest, growing of crop and general applications. Employee will also be required to conduct safety inspections and maintenance of farm equipment.

Food Safety/General cleaning: The employee will be required to clean buckets and general cleaning of work site areas Appling to food safety.

General Specifications and Physical Requirements of the Job:
The majority of the workday is spent on one’s feet, constantly in movement, and outdoors. Workers are rarely in one place for any period of time. It is estimated that 20% of the time will be spent field packing, 10% growing and maintaining, and 70% harvesting the products. All of the packing is done on in the field, as indicated as secondary agriculture under the FLSA definition of agriculture. Workers must be able to stand, walk, sit, stoop, squat, kneel, crouch, bend (from the waist), push, pull, reach, lift and carry items weighing in range from 5 to 35 pounds during the course of performing all required job specifications.

Special Requirements

E-Berry Harvest may conduct criminal background check and random drug or alcohol tests at no cost to the worker. Failure to comply with the request or testing positive may result in immediate termination. All testing will occur post-offer/pre-employment and is not part of the interview process.