At last count, USDA consists of 107,500 federal employees--full- time, part-time, and temporary--located at headquarters and field offices and agricultural posts overseas. USDA’s employees are a creative bunch--so it’s no surprise that employees have come up with unique, creative, and innovative initiatives to promote and advance civil rights and healthier working relationships, both within the Department and with USDA’s customers.

What follows is a sample of those initiatives.

"This poster should make a good visual at our upcoming conference," notes Brad Rein (left), CSREES's National AgrAbility Project leader, to Carol Maus (right), National AgrAbility Project Director for Easter Seals. They will head a conference in November, during which employees from FSA and NRCS will receive training on how they can work with the AgrAbility Project in their local communities to assist farmers, ranchers, and farm workers with disabilities to continue productive lives in agriculture. This is one of many unique, creative, and innovative initiatives in which USDA employees are promoting and advancing civil rights and healthier working relationships, both within USDA and with USDA's customers. --Photo by Marti Asner

The Food Safety and Inspection Service teamed up with USDA’s Asian Pacific American Network in Agriculture (APANA) employee organization to assist approximately 150 very small meat and poultry plants, whose owners are Asian Pacific Americans, in complying with the requirements of implementing the new Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points inspection system. Those plants had until this past January to develop and implement their HACCP plans.

“We found that we could be helpful to those Asian Pacific American plant owners by providing language interpretation and translation, offering assistance to help them understand HACCP regulatory requirements, and promoting participation by those owners in our HACCP workshops,” explained Jim Rasekh, an FSIS food scientist. “So back in 1998 FSIS first teamed up with APANA members who were also FSIS employees to offer that assistance--and we’ve finished up in January.”

Cynthia Mercado, FSIS’s special assistant for diversity, noted that this effort was part of an overall FSIS initiative called the “FSIS/APANA Harmonization Initiative.” “It began in 1997 as a dialogue between FSIS and APANA to address issues and challenges facing Asian Pacific American employees in our agency,” she said.

“Since then FSIS has broadened its Harmonization Initiative to include periodic dialogues between senior officials in FSIS and officials from other USDA civil rights employee organizations.” They include the American Indian Council (AIC), the Association for Persons with Disabilities in Agriculture (APDA), Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered Employees (GLOBE), Hispanic American Cultural Efforts (HACE), and the Coalition of Minority Employees.

The Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service has been administering its AgrAbility Project--the Department’s only program specifically designed to assist farmers, ranchers, and farm workers with disabilities to continue productive lives in agriculture--since it was first authorized in the 1990 Farm Bill.

Brad Rein, CSREES national program leader for the AgrAbility Project, said CSREES administers the program and provides grants to university-based Cooperative Extension Systems which, in turn, partner with private disability service providers. Those national partners-–the University of Wisconsin Extension Service and Easter Seals--then offer training to 18 state AgrAbility projects, which assess the needs of disabled farmers and ranchers.

“State-level AgrAbility Project staff offer farmers and ranchers such assessments as how to modify buildings and farm equipment to accommodate particular disabilities, as well as how to facilitate rural independent living,” he noted. “The Project has assisted over 8,000 farmers and ranchers with disabilities since it was established in 1991.”

Rein added that National Project staff will provide training to, among other participants, approximately 65 employees from the Farm Service Agency and the Natural Resources Conservation Service, at the annual AgrAbility conference to be held in San Antonio on November 7-10. “Our goal is to help those employees, in their local communities, assist farmers, ranchers, and farm workers with disabilities to continue productive lives in agriculture,” he said.

Specialists in the Foreign Agricultural Service’s international cooperation and development section assist developing countries in agricultural development initiatives. But in an attempt to tap an additional source of expertise, FAS recently collaborated with the International Programs staff in CSREES and the American Indian Higher Education Consortium to hold an international workshop attended by administrators, faculty, and students from U.S. Tribal Colleges and Universities, or TCUs.

“We realized that the personnel from the TCUs were subject matter specialists on many of the agricultural projects we promote abroad,” explained Howard Anderson, director of FAS’s Development Resources Division.

For instance, several attendees from the TCUs brought hands-on knowledge about fish production and farming on arid land--which would be valuable assets to offer to FAS-sponsored programs in Honduras and West Africa, respectively.

“There are many cultural similarities--such as respect for tribal traditions and environmental sensitivity--between American Indians and indigenous peoples in developing nations,” Anderson observed.

“So, through our ' Globalizing Tribal Colleges and Universities’ workshop on August 10 and 11, we encouraged the attendees from the TCUs to become more involved in international programs onsite, so they could help out in developing countries.”

USDA established a Conflict Prevention and Resolution Center in October 1998 to help USDA manage conflicts more effectively and efficiently, whether in the workplace between employees or between USDA and parties outside of the Department. It relies on “alternative dispute resolution,” or ADR, techniques, as problem-solving tools in the resolution of those conflicts. Examples of ADR techniques include mediation, facilitation, neutral evaluation, arbitration, and use of an ombudsperson. Mediation and facilitation are the two ADR methods most often offered at USDA.

“The key points in this particular approach to managing conflict in the workplace,” explained Center Director Jeff Knishkowy, “are that it involves the intervention of a neutral, unbiased, skilled third party, and it is an informal, confidential, non-adversarial, voluntary option.” The March-April 1999 issue of the USDA News carried a story on the Center and ADR.

He said that the Center’s more recent activities include updating the Department’s policy on ADR. Secretary’s Memorandum 4710-1, dated March 23, 2000 and titled “USDA Alternative Dispute Resolution Policy,” delineates the situations in which ADR techniques may be used and the role of USDA officials in ensuring that ADR alternatives are available for all employees, as well as in disputes with USDA customers.

Even more recently, USDA employees were mailed a memorandum which accompanied their Statement of Earnings and Leave for Pay Period No. 15. The memo, dated July 18, 2000, titled “Resolving Conflicts in the Workplace,” and signed by Secretary Dan Glickman, promoted the reliance on ADR techniques to resolve conflict. “I have directed all USDA agencies to make ADR services, and specifically mediation, available to their employees as an option before the filing of more formal complaints or grievances,” he said in the memo.

Glickman also noted that the Center and the Office of Communications developed a 20-minute video called “A Better Way,” which contains a mediation demonstration and explains how employees can benefit from mediation.

“Since 1998 agency ADR programs at USDA have coordinated hundreds of mediation sessions, both at headquarters and field offices,” added Center senior conflict management specialist Elly Cleaver. She said that the Center is sponsoring a National Mediator Training Conference in Crystal City, Va., on September 26-27 to enhance the skills of USDA employees who are trained mediators.

Since 1998 the National Finance Center in New Orleans has been operating “Inclusion University,” which is an independent self-study program for NFC employees. “Its purpose,” explained Don Lewis, chief of NFC’s Workforce Services Staff, “is to assist NFC employees in learning more about other people and other cultures.”

NFC program manager Kathy Barre added that this voluntary program is structured using two basic approaches to learning: ' Study,’ which is through use of books and videotapes, and ' Dialogue,’ which is through participation in discussions concerning cultural awareness in a non-threatening environment. The ' Discussion’ component takes place during the work day, while the ' Study’ component occurs outside of the work day.

“Participants in our Inclusion University fill out self-assessment forms following each course of study, to gauge what they got out of that particular approach,” she explained. “The students then earn credits, which add up to non-accredited degrees at the associate, bachelor, master, and doctorate levels,” she added.

Lewis said that, to date, NFC employees have earned 89 ' Inclusion University degrees,’ including 61 ' Associate of Awareness and Inclusion’ degrees, 15 ' Bachelor of Understanding and Inclusion’ degrees, 7 ' Master of Interpersonal Skill and Inclusion’ degrees, and 6 ' Doctorate of Diversity and Inclusion’ degrees.

USDA employees also have a history of promoting civil rights and healthier working relationships outside normal office activities and on an individual basis. As a typical example, every September for the last four years Bill Stump, the veterinary medical officer with the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service’s Veterinary Services Field Office, stationed in Grand Island, Neb., has demonstrated how to test bison for brucellosis and tuberculosis to a 6^th grade class of mostly American Indian students at a local middle school in Mission, S.D., on the Rosebud Indian Reservation.

Often working with APHIS veterinary medical officer Joseph Coyle or APHIS animal health technician Alan Zastrow, Stump explains how the equipment is used in collecting blood samples from the bison, and how to conduct a 'card test,’ which is a blood-testing method that provides instantaneous, onsite test results.

“First, we do our presentation in their classroom, which includes a video and a slide show on how we round up and then test the bison,” Stump explained. “Then, a few days later, the students travel by bus to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Ft. Niobrara Wildlife Refuge in northern Nebraska--close to the South Dakota/Nebraska border--where the students watch the roundup of generally around one hundred bison annually, and then see how we actually collect blood samples from most of the animals rounded up.”

“Most of the students in that local community are American Indians--and bison tend to carry much historical and spiritual meaning for them,” he observed. “So their teachers tell us that our efforts at educational outreach have been a real motivator for the students.”

As another example, Archie Tucker, the area administrative officer at the Agricultural Research Service’s Mid South Area Office in Stoneville, Ms., has worked with high school students in his community to develop skills that will help them in the work place. Along with three area office members of his staff--human resources and outreach coordinator Rita Keeling, budget assistant Justine Bryson, and [then] environmental protection specialist Becky Hoagland--Tucker serves on a committee that reviews the curriculum of the marketing class at the local vocational technical center.

“Our committee makes recommendations for improving curriculum and activities at the center,” he explained, “and we also conduct mock interviews for the students.” In some instances, he noted, students are hired on the spot for summer employment with ARS in Stoneville.

The above examples of unique, creative, and innovative employee initiatives to promote and advance civil rights and healthier working relationships, both within the Department and with USDA’s customers, supplement material contained in a USDA report dated April 2000. The 42-page report, titled “Commitment to Progress--Civil Rights at the United States Department of Agriculture,” documents the Department’s more recent efforts to improve its civil rights practices and outreach efforts, with a focus on such areas as hiring and lending, program outreach, and customer service. The report is available on USDA’s home page at http://www.usda.gov/news/civil/cr.html

“I have no higher priority as Secretary than improving USDA’s record on civil rights and ensuring that all our employees and customers are treated with fairness, dignity, and respect,” Glickman said when the report was officially released on May 5, 2000.

“This report shows that our efforts are having a real impact on USDA’s programs and people,” he noted. “However, this is not a victory lap, it is a progress report, one that we intend to build on in the coming years.”