Farmworkers And Laborers
Employer
450 Licking Valley Road
Cynthiana, KY 41031
United States
Job description
BURLEY TOBACCO: Growing Tobacco transplants: Greenhouse preparation, seeding, & maintenance; & plantbed preparation. Transplant Activities. Cultivation & maintenance. Harvest, curing, stripping, baling, & preparation for marketing. These work activities anticipated to be performed at any time/various times throughout the entire period of employment. Workers plant, cultivate, harvest(cut & house), strip & bale Burly Tobacco. Workers may ride/operate mechanical transplanter for planting. May walk behind transplanter to reset missing plants. Workers will chop out weeds with a hoe, or pull weeds by hand. Workers will remove tops & suckers from plants. Workers using a tobacco knife will cut ripe plants off at ground level & spear the tobacco stalk over metal spear onto wooden stick (stick is 48 inches long, one end is stuck in ground, & metal spear is placed on other end). Industry standard is six (6) plants per stick (stick & six(6) plants may weigh 80-100 pounds, & plants may be seven (7) feet tall). Workers may drop sticks in standing tobacco before cutting by hand or by machine. Worker will transfer tobacco-loaded sticks from ground to wagon or trailer & load sticks in orderly fashion on said wagon or trailer. Worker will then transfer sticks from wagon or trailer to other workers standing on rails in tobacco-curing barn. Workers standing on rails (worker stands with one foot on each rail -- rails may be 48 inches apart & from 6 to 40 feet from ground) will either hang stick & separate plants, or will transfer to another worker for purposes of air-curing the tobacco. For best results, curing barns should be filled in as short a time as possible.
Care must be exercised to prevent bruising or breaking of plants & leaves at all times. Care must also be exercised in using tobacco knife, spear, while standing on rails, & stripping the crop. Workers will take great care when stripping (removing tobacco from the stick) the tobacco. The tobacco is taken down from the barn. The stalks with leaves are removed from the sticks & piled under a piece of plastic to retain moisture (bulking down). Each worker pulls his assigned grade for the stalk & passes the stalk down to fellow workers. When a worker gets a full hand, the tobacco is tied into hands & placed on a strip stick. May assist in baling tobacco by placing cured tobacco onto conveyor loading system or directly into baler. Burley tobacco work is paid the hourly adverse effect wage rate (AEWR).
Special Requirements
This job requires a minimum of one months of verifiable prior experience working on a diversified crop farm handling both manual and machine tasks associated with commodity production and harvest activities. Applicants must be able to furnish verbal or written statement establishing relevant prior work experience.
Saturday work required.
Workers with a clean driving record (no major moving violations such as but not limited to Driving While Intoxicated or Reckless Driving) and able to obtain an insurable driver's license may be required to drive company vehicles.
Persons seeking employment in this position must be available for the entire period requested by the employer. Employer reserves the right to terminate a worker if the employer reasonably finds worker's performance during the trial period to be unacceptable.