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UCCE specialist John W. Mamer dies at 83

John William Mamer, UC Cooperative Extension emeritus labor economist, died Friday, July 2. He was 83.
 
Mamer, who spent the last 28 years of his career at the University of California, died in his Berkeley home after a long battle with cancer.
 
Colleagues credit Mamer for leadership in applying to agriculture the field of human resource management. Recognizing the significance of personnel management practices within every production firm, he brought attention to decisions that had been largely ignored from agricultural economics perspectives.
 
Mamer's work helped scholars as well as farm managers understand different approaches, techniques, and consequences of choices in such areas as employee hiring, training, performance review and compensation. His landmark study co-authored with Donald Rosedale showed how structured recruitment, selection and pay practices in a lemon harvesting cooperative yielded both efficiencies for the firm and gains for workers.
 
"John was in the vanguard of a movement encouraging and enabling managers throughout agriculture to consider precepts of human resource management," said Howard Rosenberg, a farm personnel management specialist based at UC Berkeley. "I think that his interest in this field stemmed from his genuine love and respect for people. He was constantly making new friends, from all stations in life. Those of us fortunate to have worked directly with John will remember him as a most perceptive, visionary, amiable and supportive colleague."
 
Mamer encouraged his colleagues to advance their careers. Shortly after being hired as a labor management farm advisor in Stanislaus County, Gregorio Billikopf Encina expressed his gratitude to Mamer for the sabbatical leave privilege. 
 
"I mentioned that I wanted to go to Chile for my first sabbatical leave," Billikopf recalls. Mamer urged him instead to use the time to further his education.

"I was so touched by this comment," Billikopf said, "that I did not wait for my sabbatical leave to begin the process of getting my master's degree. Instead, I began to take one evening class at a time and in four years graduated with my master's degree. This systematic approach to studying my new field gave me a great advantage in my job. If it were not for John Mamer, I wonder if I would have taken my field of study as seriously as I did."
 
Born April 13, 1921, in Mount Angel, Oregon, Mamer grew up with his 15 siblings and worked on a farm in California's Imperial Valley.
 
In 1946, Mamer received his bachelor's degree in labor economics from San Diego State University, where he graduated with honors. In 1958, he earned his Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from UC Berkeley. Soon afterwards, he joined the faculty of the University of Connecticut, as associate professor in agricultural economics.
 
By 1962, he returned to UC Berkeley as a UC Cooperative Extension junior specialist in agricultural labor economics, focusing on the area of farm labor management. He later became a teaching assistant in agricultural economics at UC Davis, where he served as the dean of University Extension and assistant vice chancellor for the University and Public Programs from 1969 to 1972 before returning to work full-time at UC Berkeley.  
 
While he was a Cooperative Extension specialist, Mamer developed extension programs in the areas of community resource development, farm labor economics and farm labor management.
 
Upon his retirement in 1990, Susan Laughlin, then associate dean for Cooperative Extension at UC Berkeley's College of Natural Resources, said, "More than anyone else, John Mamer is responsible for having Cooperative Extension, and perhaps the Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources, involved in the whole area of farm labor management. He was one of the most important people in establishing that program and its success."
 
His research, education, and administrative works are of continuing influence across the nation.
 
Mamer was co-founder and charter member of the Agricultural Personnel Management Association, and a member of the Agricultural Employment Work Group, commissioned by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
 
Mamer is survived by his wife, Mary of Berkeley; son John and his wife, Susan of Los Angeles; son Roger and his wife, Constance of Sebastopol; and granddaughter, Lauren of Los Angeles.