Latino Labor Challenges in the

Dairy Industry:

What dairy employees tell us

Phil Durst

Stan Moore

MSU Extension Sr. Educators

Dairy farm employees

• Increase in Latino numbers on farm is seen

even in the northern Lower Peninsula and even

on farms that have < 200 cows.

• Farm work is hard, demanding work and can be

long hours and repetitive work. Conditions can

be less than ideal.

• That is true for all workers, whether English or

Latino.

• Many dairy owners think that Latino employees

solve their labor problems,

but many industry professionals say that the

availability of Latino labor often masks and

magnifies problems in labor management.

Dairy Employee Management Project

• 2012 initiated a project aimed at improving

employee management using what we can learn

from employee feedback.

• 14 dairy farms enrolled to date in 4 states

• Employees receive a paper copy (English or

Spanish) of the survey (29 Q’s) and instructed to

call a bilingual interviewer.

• Owners and managers surveyed also about

what they think their employees will answer.

Dairy Employee Management Project

• 174/230 employees have called for interview

(76% response rate)

• Although differences by ethnicity was not the

primary focus of our project, we had our

interviewer collect that information.

Spanish-speaking: (97) 56%

English-speaking: (77) 44%

Dairy Employee Management Project

• When we sort by

ethnicity, our survey

of employees

revealed some

differences between

Spanish-speaking

and English-speaking

employees, and

many similarities.

Tenure on farm

How long have you worked on this farm?

(we could only enter whole numbers)

Spanish-speaking: 3.68 yrs.

English-speaking: 5.64 yrs.

Tenure on farm

How long would you like to remain working at this

farm?

(1 = , 1 yr., 2 = 2-3 yrs., 3 = 4-5 yrs., 4 = until

retirement)

Spanish-speaking: 2.84 rating

English-speaking: 3.12 rating

Satisfaction

How satisfied are you working on this farm?

(Scale 1 – 5, where 1 = not at all satisfied, 5 =

most satisfied)

Spanish-speaking: 4.16

English-speaking: 4.04

Equal treatment

We did not detect any significant difference by

ethnicity, but . . .

• That doesn’t mean that there were not cases of

employees who felt they were not treated the

same as English employees on some farms, and

• Equal treatment doesn’t mean good treatment.

Training

• Essential for being able to meet standards while

working with animals

• Rate the frequency of training

(1 = never, 2 = only when started, 3 = 1x/yr., 4 =

every 3 mos., 5 = 1x/month)

Spanish-speaking: 2.94

English-speaking: 2.86

Training

• Was it because they have little interest in

learning?

• Employees were asked to rate their interest in

learning on a scale of 1 – 5 where 1 = “already

know enough to do my job”, and 5 = “I am

interested in dairy and I want to learn more”

Employees: 4.73

Training:

• Employers were asked what their employees

would respond to that question:

Employers: 3.27

• Quote from a Spanish-speaking employee in

response to a question about their familiarity

with the farm goals:

“All the companies usually put (up) charts (with

the company goals), but here there is nothing.

We come here like donkeys to do what we are

told to do.”

We believe that in order for

employees to be full team members

that they need to know both the goals

and their performance against them.

Communication

• The language barrier is a big barrier on most

dairies. Therefore, Spanish-speaking employees

tend to be isolated from their employer and from

English-speaking employees.

“The owner sometimes comes near me and

starts talking; I don’t know if he is talking to me

or to himself. I don’t understand English.”

Engagement

Engaged employees: “a connection between an

employee and employer which results in that

employee giving voluntary effort.” Charles Contreras,

Zoetis PeopleFirst

That can be difficult to assess. But one question

we asked helped us to get at that:

“How frequently do you come up with ideas on

how to improve the business, whether or not you

share them?”

Engagement

Frequent ideas

• “Always and I share them”

• Yes, I come up with a lot of suggestions and

actually we do proceed with them; is quite often”

• Always thinking of things”

• We come up with ideas to make things easy. We

share the with the supervisor and then he let us

know if we can do them”

• Weekly because we have lots of discussions on

what we are going to do.”

Engagement

Occasional ideas:

• “Sometimes I have ideas and I share them with

the supervisor”

• Try to contribute with my ideas as much as

possible, but there is not much consideration.”

• “Sometimes I have some ideas. The supervisor

sets me free if the ideas are good for the farm.”

Engagement

“Disengaged”

• “I have some ideas and share them but they

never consider them”

• “Gave up on sharing them; they never do

anything with my ideas.”

• I have some ideas, but they always say they are

not good ones, so I don’t share them anymore.”

• I have a lot of good ideas. I don’t share them

because he thinks we are stupid. He is not open

to hear new ideas.

Engagement

Frequency of ideas to improve the business:

Spanish English

Frequent 17.5% 40.3%

Occasional 43.2 45.5

“Disengaged” 39.2 14.3

Engagement

• Is it cultural or is is management related?

• Individual farm data where they had Spanish-

speaking employees

A B C D E FN=6 n=13 n=13 n=13 n=10 n=6

• Frequent 0 23 39 8 0 50

• Occasional 17 54 31 62 50 17

• “Disengaged” 83 23 31 23 50 33

Engagement

Therefore, we believe that good employee

management is the primary factor determining

whether employees on a farm are engaged or

disengaged.

We believe that good employee management:

• Involves all employees as team members

• Values the minds of employees

• Communicates goals and performance

standards

• Provides meaningful and positive feedback

• Treats employees with respect and fairness.

Thank you!

Questions?

Phil Durst Stan Moore

MSU Extension MSU Extension

durstp@msu.edu moorest@msu.edu

989-387-5346 231-350-0400