$2-Million Award to Growers Hit : Job training: An obscure state agency has let the contract to teach the finer points of picking tomatoes--and other crops. The governor has replaced his three appointees who voted for the deal.

How do you teach a seasonal farm worker whose specialty is harvesting lettuce to become proficient at picking beets? Or weeding carrots and radishes? Or thinning broccoli?

According to an obscure state agency called the Employment Training Panel, you direct the worker to watch an instructional video and listen to a lecture for an hour. Then you send him or her out to the vegetable field for 59 hours of on-the-job training for each crop.

Finally, you provide the employers of this and other field hands nearly $2 million in state funds to pay for this “cross-training” so seasonal workers will become expert in tending other crops year-round.

The plan was approved by the Employment Training Panel last month in a contract with the Ventura County Agricultural Assn., which represents six major growers and a huge egg factory.

Award of the $2-million contract, which would cover about 800 trainee workers, was vigorously protested by a representative of the Deukmejian Administration as an abuse that could be attacked as “farmer welfare.”

“Fifty-nine hours to learn how to pick a tomato . . . is somewhat ridiculous,” said Juan Chacon, the state Employment Development Department’s advocate for migrant seasonal farm workers. He told the panel he was sent to the meeting as a representative of Alice Gonzalez, director of the department.

“It is, in our opinion, a subsidy to agricultural employers and those employers generally are already subsidized at length by other government programs,” Chacon said.

Chacon said that even without a state grant, employers would see to it that field hands learn to pick the crops as part of their normal work. He also warned that even after farm workers completed the training, the issue would remain “as to why we are paying training money to train people to earn just barely above minimum wage.”

The virtually autonomous panel--three members are appointed by Gov. George Deukmejian and four by the Legislature--approved the contract on a 5-2 vote.

Scarcely two weeks later, Deukmejian quietly eased out his appointees--who had all voted for the contract--and named three new members. Press Secretary Robert Gore insisted that the approval of the contract and appointment of new panelists were unrelated actions.

“There is no linkage, no retribution,” Gore said. “We just wanted to give more Californians a chance to serve.”

The contract has not been formally signed and may be reviewed by the three new Deukmejian appointees.

The Employment Training Panel was created in 1983 to help finance training and retraining of workers as new technologies threatened them with unemployment. As part of their unemployment insurance contributions, California employers are taxed to finance the program.

Although it paddles quietly in the backwaters of state bureaucracy, the tiny agency dispenses mega-grants. Over the last six years, it has given $565 million in contracts. This year, it is expected to spend $140 million.

Recipients have included such major employers as Pacific Bell, Bank of America, Carter Hawley Hale, Ralphs, Nordstrom, Vons and leading electronics and defense industry companies. Job training programs of the United Auto Workers and other labor unions also are leading recipients.

A key provision of the Employment Training Panel law requires that grants should make a “substantial contribution to the long-term job security” of the trainees--who are paid their regular wages while in the program-- and “result in jobs.”

Chacon charged that the contract with Ventura growers offered nothing for low-paid agricultural laborers to get into the “mainstream of the (California) economy. They are and will remain on the fringe.”

“The field hand proposal is not believable or credible,” agreed panel member Elinor Glenn of Burbank, a retired officer of the Service Employees International Union. “I don’t believe we ought to be in that business. . . . I think it is a wage subsidy.”

The contract was defended by a spokesman for the Ventura County Agricultural Assn., which will pass the program funds on to seven employers: Rio Farms, San Miguel Produce, Underwood Ranches, Do Right’s Plant Growers, Deardorff-Jackson Co., Bob Jones Ranch and Egg City.

Association spokesman Steve Meyers told the hearing that the growers wanted to train the migrant seasonal workers to perform multiple tasks on various crops so they could work throughout the year in the Ventura County area instead of leaving to follow crops around the state.

“We are trying to get these people skilled enough, to increase their wage enough, and to provide continuous work through several different crops . . .,” Meyers said. “It is a misnomer, I think, to say if you can pick one crop, you can pick another. You simply can’t.”

Meyers said that the proper cultivation, picking, bunching, banding, boxing and lifting of different vegetables varies widely and demands a multitude of carefully honed skills.

Besides field hands, others in the $2-million program would be trained in the operation of sophisticated farm machinery and handling techniques used in nurseries and packing sheds.

As their share of the training, farmers would contribute $93,555 worth of in-kind support, typically for administrative costs and training supervision.

Another panel member, James Quillan of Byron, executive director of the California Conference of Machinists, said he believes farm laborers are entitled to participate in the program.

“I am not prepared to just close the door on those folks at this point, because I think we’re supposed to be trying to serve them,” Quillan said of the Ventura farm workers.

The present Ventura contract is almost identical to a two-year, $2.3-million plan approved in 1989 for one Ventura County grower, Boskovich Farms. In a review of that training performance, the panel’s staff in August criticized the Boskovich program.

It noted that of a group of 113 workers who completed the Boskovich training, recent payroll records show only 65 were still employed there 90 days later.

The staff reported that George Boskovich, vice president of the farm, said some workers went elsewhere for better pay and some left for housing and family reasons.

A source close to the panel said the three Deukmejian appointees had actively sought reappointment. “They were extremely distressed to find out they were not reappointed,” the source said.

The appointees were Chairman Robert C. Thierry of Fairfield, a retired federal employee; Helen J. Martin of Newhall, owner of an automobile parts store, and Robert Munoz, an Oxnard insurance executive.

Two appointees of the Legislature, Quillan and Pat Williams, a UAW official, also voted for the contract. The two other legislative appointees, Glenn and Steve Mack of Oakland, a Teamsters leader, voted against it.

The new chairman, William Woods of Lafayette, a retired vice president of AT&T;, said last week that he was not familiar with the issue and was unprepared to say whether he would seek to have the contract reconsidered.

EDUCATION OF A RADISH HARVESTER

Here is a sample of the curriculum under a nearly $2-million state grant to train farm laborers to handle crops. CLASS

Instructional video and lecture on general field safety; equipment safety; pesticide posting and re-entry; hazardous communication; reporting work-related injuries.

* Instruction time: One hour.

ON-SITE JOB TRAINING

Students taught correct box forming and positioning; safe field-working procedures; told how to “pull (radishes) gently to avoid damage.” * Instruction time: Twenty hours.

Training in product inspection for insect and weather damage as well as “proper positioning of product (10-14 radishes per bunch, one band at top of bunch, and bunch carefully laid (down) ... to keep clean).” * Instruction time: Twenty hours.

Students taught that “six dozen bunches are packed per box. Wooden field crate left open.” * Instruction time: Fifteen hours.

Students taught safe lifting techniques including “range of motion, box weight and body mechanics,” as well as “safe stacking procedures; positioning of box, number of tiers and boxes, (other) body mechanics, proper tying and covering of product on truck.” * Instruction time: Four hours.

* TOTAL INSTRUCTION TIME: Sixty hours.

Source: State agreement with Ventura County Agricultural Assn.