Nursery Workers

Job description

Workers will perform assigned duties as instructed by their supervisor. Duties may vary from time to time.

Nursery Labor: Workers will be responsible for planting, weeding, pruning, staking, spraying, and other activities related to growing, and loading potted trees, and shrubs. The workers will also be responsible for maintaining the grounds, and the existing irrigation system.

General Farm Labor and Facilities Maintenance: Workers will weed; mow grass, prune trees or hedges, clear land, remove brush, maintain fencing, repair irrigation, and plant young trees and bushes. Workers may help deliver meals to works in the field, and may be asked to clean facilities including bathrooms, kitchens, and common areas.

Blueberry Harvest: If harvesting, workers will pick gallon buckets of ripe fruit on assigned rows while taking care not to damage or bruise blueberries. Full buckets are delivered to nearby wagon for inspection and weight. Workers are expected to harvest a minimum number of pounds of blueberries per hour, equal to Adverse Effect Wage Rate (AEWR) divided by the piece rate and will be subject to disciplinary action for failing to do so. After completion of training and the designated acclimation period,
workers are also expected to maintain quality standards by picking all ripe fruit from bush and avoiding the dropping of fruit on the ground.

Blueberry Packing: Packinghouse workers typically do a variety of jobs related the packaging and shipping of blueberries. Duties may include receiving, dumping inspecting, boxing, stacking, and shipping of fruit. Other jobs include making boxes, stickering boxes, cleaning equipment and facilities, and monitoring food safety. All workers in the packinghouse must wear long sleeved shirts, long pants, and closed toe shoes.

Citrus Harvest: Worker will remove fruit from the tree and place it into pick sack. When the pick sack is full, take full sack to fruit tub located in the grove and drop fruit from pick sack into tub. In order to perform this kind of work, worker must be able to work outside for at least 6 hours a day in all kinds of weather and be in possession of the requisite physical strength and endurance to repeat the picking process rapidly, working quickly and skillfully with their hands, and carrying a large number of sacks of fruit from the area in which the fruit is being harvested to the location of the tub. In some cases, a ladder will be needed to reach the top of the tree.

All Jobs: Workers may be asked to drive farm equipment or farm trucks. A worker must possess a valid driver’s license issued in the United States or foreign equivalent license in order to operate the company vehicle, in accordance with license restrictions and vehicle classifications applicable to that license.

The employer will provide the tools necessary to perform the described job duties without charge to the worker. The employer will charge the worker for reasonable costs related to the workers' refusal or negligent failure to return the tools or due to such workers willful damage or destruction of the tools. The employer will provide one-day (8 hours) of training. The employer may take disciplinary action and/or terminate the worker with notification to the Job Service local office if the worker fails to perform and maintain the required quality standards after the one-day training and 5-day acclimation period for new workers, or otherwise follow the reasonable work-related directions of their supervisor.

Special Requirements

The employer may conduct a drug and/or alcohol test post-employment at the employers expense.