The Rural Voice, 1978-06, Page 11it
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frustrations they had suffered trying to get help through the local
Manpower offices. What they want is a labour pool of their own
in the Waterloo-Wellington-Dufferin area but local Manpower
officials claim there isn't any money.
Mrs. Weber says she hopes the pool can be set up. While her
office is set up to handle only Grey and Bruce counties, because
it is the only farm labour pool in the area. it often gets calls from
farmers in Waterloo, Wellington, Perth, Huron, Dufferin and
Peel counties. The nearest farm labour pool office to the east is in
Port Perry and in the south there is a sub -office in Woodstock
and offices in such centres as Simcoe.
The Labour Pool idea was popular with the government in 1974
when the program began. The process was that first a local
Agricultural Manpower Board (LAMB) was set up. In Bruce this
board consists of four farmers from Bruce, four farmers from
Grey, two representatives from Manpower and two from the
Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food. This board decides
where the pool is to be established, if there should be a sub
office, what salaries will be paid, etc. Once the Pool is set up the
board meets periodically to talk about problems, such as
accommodation or to help set wage guidelines.
"They're my boss," Mrs. Weber says, "and it's fantastic to
have them behind you." She says her board represents nearly
every facet of agriculture in the area.
Mrs. Weber's office is funded through a contract with the
federal government's Department of Manpower and
Immigration. She gets a monthly cheque to run the Pool but
beyond that she's pretty much self-employed. She hires the staff
she feels necessary to do the job and sets up the office routine. It
makes for a tight ship without much of the red tape that many
government offices find themselves snarled in.
The staff consists of two full-time persons at the Walkerton
office, plus a summer student help. There is a sub office in Owen
Sound and in apple season there's a second sub office in
Clarksburg to handle the heavy seasonal labour need there. One
of the things that makes the Grey -Bruce Pool work so well, Mrs.
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Weber says, is that the staff gets along so well with each other.
Last year the Pool made about 1100 placements, although
Mrs. Weber prefers not to talk in numbers so much as in
pleasing the farmers she serves. "You can't manufacture good
help." she says, but the Pool tries to fit the worker to the job.
One of the ways the Pool is so successful is that it works extra
hard to make sure it's sending the right people for the right job.
If a farmer is looking for a herdsman or farm manager or some
other full-time, year round help, the staff will visit the farm to
get as much information as possible about what is expected of
the employee such as if a house is provided if heat and hydro are
paid, etc. It's because they are unable to give this same kind of
personal scrutiny to enquiries from counties other than Grey and
Bruce that Mrs. Weber feels she can't do justice to the requests
she gets from outside her area.
At the other end of the job matchup, the Pool staff always tries
to talk to the applicant for a job. The staff checks back on at least
three references to make sure what kind of work record the
person has. They never send anyone out unless they've been
checked out, Mrs. Weber says.
One of the most successful programs the office runs is a relief
milking service for dairy farmers who want to take a night off, a
weekend off, or perhaps a holiday. A regular number of relief
milkers is kept on file for those who need the service. These
milkers must have milked for at least three farmers previously
before they're listed, so that the Pool officials can check on the
reliability of their work. Another way around the problem is that
when a farmer is going away for, say, a weekend a relief milker
may be sent to the farm on the Thursday or Friday to be trained
on the job and the Pool will pay the expense of the training
period at the regular rate of pay. That rate is worked out between
the farmer and milker but the going rate seems to be about 35
per hour, Mrs. Weber says.
The service has worked well and there have never really been
any serious problems, she says, but she has constant nightmares
about coming to the office on a Monday morning and finding that
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THE RURAL VOICE/JUNE 1978. PG. 11,