This study is important because of the growing instability of field crews in the Forest Service. In the last 20 years, the role of the USDA Forest Service has been transformed in ways that affect all Forest Service workers. While discussing these changes, one supervisor said, "It's more than just timber now.... Everything is branching out." Branching out describes the Forest Service's shift from a focus on production goals to social and educational goals. A supervisor concerned about budget cuts said, "This district used to have a BD [brush disposal] crew, and because of budget constraints it went away."

Branching out and severe cuts in the budget for hiring seasonal crews have left work in the field unfinished. The adoption of new kinds of workers such as hosted groups and volunteers has become necessary to, as one supervisor said, "Get the job done." Hosted programs are workgroups formed when outside agencies enter into partnerships with the Forest Service to accomplish specific project work in the field. Hosted employees are paid a base wage by the hosted program. The Forest Service sometimes matches funds with the outside agency to pay for the work. Hosted programs include the Senior Commu Service Employment Program (SCSEP), the Student Conservation Association (SCA), the Federal Corrections Institute (FCI), Youth Conservation Corps (YCC), and several others. Volunteers also enter into agreements with the Forest Service to complete fieldwork. Although volunteers are unpaid workers, they are covered by the Office of Worker Compensation Program (OWCP), so the Forest Service is ultimately liable for injuries and accidents that occur on the job. Seniors, students, mountain biking clubs, Boy Scout troops, swim teams, and church groups are some examples of Forest Service volunteers.

Several problems have arisen from using these new kinds of workgroups in the Forest Service. Today's supervisors are faced with different types of crews who work on continually changing projects in the field. Paramount concerns for current Forest Service field crew leaders are keeping control, completing work tasks, and especially maintaining safety awareness in these new kinds of workgroups. Liability for injuries is also a principal concern for the Forest Service. The primary rationales for funding this project are the increasing safety concerns and the agency's liability when working with these new crews. To understand the current project, it is important to know its history.

In 1986, the Forest Service's Missoula Technology and Development Center (MTDC) produced a training video, Supervisor and the Work Crew, for first-line supervisors of field crews. The Forest Service Washington Office of Occupational Safety and Health supported and funded the project.

In 1996, MTDC produced another training video, Making a Crew. This video focused on the workers, not the supervisors. While interviewing Forest Service employees during the production of Making a Crew, Driessen noted that numerous changes had occurred in the fieldwork culture. This insight led to the white paper, A Changing Forest Service Work Culture: Training Crew Leaders (Driessen 1997). The white paper had two purposes: to present some of the changes taking place in the work culture in the Forest Service and to discuss some sociological reflections on the training of Forest Service crew leaders. The paper concluded by recommending that the supervisor training program be updated.

The project to update the supervisor training program began in January 2000. This training project was also supported and funded by the Forest Service Washington Office of Occupational Safety and Health. The new project team met several times to discuss project history and to set the goals for the first year's work. Development work on the project began—reading related materials pertaining to the project, interviewing current Forest Service supervisors, and observing and taking notes in the field.

Development work for the updated version was based on a qualitative approach using semistructured, open-ended questions (Glaser and Strauss 1967; Driessen 1997) similar to the approach used to develop the original supervisor training program. Interviews with Forest Service district rangers, supervisors, and coordinators were tape recorded and transcribed. Coordinators are previous Forest Service supervisors who now manage and plan projects and act as Forest Service representatives or direct supervisors of hosted groups and volunteers. The interviews were coded using Atlas TI (Muhr 1997) and Topical Analysis (Driessen 1969).

In February 2000, the project team began interviewing Forest Service supervisors in the Missoula, MT, area in the Northern Region. Four interviews were conducted in Missoula. In March 2000, 10 interviews were conducted in 3 Forest Service districts around Montgomery, AL, in the Southern Region. In June 2000, seven interviews were completed in the Columbia River Scenic Area near Portland, OR, in the Pacific Northwest Region. Another seven interviews were conducted at Forest Service districts near Yachats, OR, and the Dunes, 1 hour south of Yachats, in the Pacific Northwest Region. The final trip for 2000 was to New Mexico in the Southwestern Region. During the last week of July, 11 Forest Service fieldwork supervisors were interviewed from four different Forest Service districts around Santa Fe and Albuquerque.

Forty current Forest Service supervisors with several years experience supervising seasonal, volunteer, and hosted crews were interviewed for the project. During the initial interviews, investigators asked a broad spectrum of questions to identify the changes in current fieldwork crews and the difficulties supervisors faced. As the project progressed, questions focused on the problems supervisors encountered when leading hosted and volunteer workgroups.

Primarily, the project team spoke to coordinators in charge of volunteer and hosted workgroups. However, the team also spoke to supervisors of a variety of traditional field crews who were working on science, recreation, fire management, and timber-marking projects. Minorities, including Native Americans, African Americans, Asians, and several women, and senior citizens were among the Forest Service supervisors interviewed.

When the project began, the project team planned to identify the changes in seasonal field crews and to use that knowledge to design and produce a new training program for seasonal field crew leaders. As interviews progressed, the project team found that traditional seasonal crews were almost extinct on districts. Workgroups, such as volunteers and hosted programs, were replacing and augmenting traditional seasonal work crews. Because of this finding, the project took a different direction.

After traveling to various regions and interviewing a wide variety of supervisors, several general themes became clear. As expected, problems with budget cuts and downsizing were major concerns for crew leaders. However, early on the project team did not realize that budget cuts and the continued rapid downsizing had eliminated most seasonal field crews throughout the Forest Service.

The project team found that while the mission of the Forest Service to protect the National Forests has not changed, the manner in which this mission is carried out has changed significantly. The Forest Service is branching out from timber production to community and social service. The primary example the team found was the Forest Service's use of hosted programs and volunteers to promote education in communities, as well as to help districts complete tasks. These changes affect the composition of workgroups and create new problems for supervision and safety.

For example, the project team found that the few stable crews that do exist today are expected to do many different tasks. As one supervisor said, "As work comes up we are asked to pull together across traditional boundaries to get the work done." Another supervisor described the changes this way: "I'm used to the old crew dogs. They went out in the woods and got the job done, and they didn't have to know how to relate to the public. Now, you're a crew leader, you have to know how to switch gears all the time."

An additional finding, and the main focus of this paper, is the emergence of a variety of new partnerships in field workgroups. These new partnerships raise a broad spectrum of supervisory challenges. Several of these new workgroups perform potentially dangerous jobs, like trail maintenance and tree planting projects that were previously done by work-savvy, stable seasonal crews. Coordinators expressed concerns about the safety of the new workgroups and liability issues for the Forest Service.

This paper will present problems faced by Forest Service supervisors who coordinate volunteer and hosted workgroups. The first section will identify and describe problems that have a major impact on safety and liability. The second section will explore other safety problems and more specific problems that influence the way supervisors get the job done. A discussion of the effects of these new workgroups on the Forest Service follows. The paper ends with recommendations to terminate the current training program, Supervisor and the Work Crew (Driessen 1986), and begin a new training project to create more relevant tools to help Forest Service coordinators safely organize and supervise volunteers and hosted workgroups.