Bailey Nurseries is a fourth-generation family-owned nursery serving customers throughout the U.S. and Canada. They are widely recognized as one of the United States' largest wholesale nurseries, with products distributed by more than 4500 independent garden centers, landscapers, growers and re-wholesalers. Their main offices and growing fields are located in and around Newport, Minnesota.
Bailey Nurseries acknowledges: “We could never have accomplished everything we have in the last hundred plus years without the dedication and just plain hard work of the people who work with us.”
During Bailey Nurseries’ peak periods in spring and summer they employ over 400 full-time and 1,200 seasonal employees at their facilities across the country. They take great pride in the employees and the employees reciprocate with amazing pride in their work. So not surprisingly, many employees have been with Bailey’s for 20 years and longer. Employees and their families are considered part of the Bailey family.
Enter the vast majority of Hmong American Partnership’s newcomer refugee participants. They were farmers in Burma, Bhutan, Thailand and Laos. Their low level of English proficiency and computer skills are a barrier to employment in many non-farming jobs in their new home.
It has been said that “the best social program available is a job.” Bailey Nurseries helps people on this fundamental level. In Bailey Nurseries’ farm fields, former farmers are able to use their skills once more to provide the high Bailey standard of care to seedlings, trees and shrubs. In May 2011, Bailey Nurseries called Hmong American Partnership Job Developers and hired fourteen Hmong American Partnership participants for seasonal employment that may last all the way until November, with frequent overtime pay. Participants gain confidence and additional skills and become used to the punctuality and discipline demanded by American wage labor. Seasonal employees are welcome to apply each season. Some people work seasonally for Bailey Nurseries and make a comfortable enough living to need no other job in between seasons. Others prove their versatility to Bailey Nurseries and work all year with the skeleton crew that maintain the greenhouses and plants brought into storage.
Bailey Nurseries has called on Hmong American Partnership and hired mass numbers of workers from HAP in past years, too. The kindness and respect Bailey personnel and management has always shown to HAP workers is greatly appreciated.
Hmong American Partnership is proud of its partner, Bailey Nurseries, and looks forward to the green shoots of further collaboration in the future.