Farm workers in the Middle Willamette Valley and the new OT law

When he came to the US from Mexico in 1983, he was in his 30s and got a job picking strawberries near Corvallis — a job he learned quickly that was excruciating on his back and knees.

Picking garlic and onions was still too much stress on his back, so he tried bait fish, paying $15 for a bucket of 1,000 worms.

Eventually, he found a job more suitable for his height at Holiday Trees Farm in Corvallis, cutting and planting pine trees. He worked Monday through Saturday, but sometimes all week during time constraints, when he had to load trailers with freshly cut Christmas trees.

The work didn’t offer many benefits—no vacation, sick leave, or time off—but it did get me some extra work.

Gomorrah Arias, now 76 and living in an affordable apartment complex for farmworkers in Lebanon, knows that many Oregon farms don’t historically offer this benefit, which is why he’s interested to see how the new state law might, which forces the farmer to pay overtimeaffects the workers.

Lots of people will be affected He said through an interpreter.

Although it remains to be seen how farm workers in the middle Willamette Valley will be affected, as the law makes its way through its first year on the books.

Oregon joined seven other states when the House passed Bill 4002 last year, which requires farmers to pay their employees one-and-a-half hours for working more than 40 hours a week.

However, the dramatic shift in Oregon’s farm industry will be gradual.

This year, overtime begins after 55 hours. In 2025, it will start 48 hours later, and by 2027, it will be 40, which is the standard limit for most industries across the country.

This is one of the reasons advocates have been lobbying so hard for the law. Historically, farm workers, many of whom are Hispanic and economically disadvantaged, have been excluded from overtime pay since the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which mandated benefit from most other workers.

Another reason for this pay: Overtime can be stressful, especially in farming.

Gomorrah Arias remembers the high demands of planting trees during the holiday season. He said he and his crew would start work at 6 a.m., and sometimes work until 1 a.m., or until as many trailers as the company needed to fill with pine trees were loaded.

By the mid-2000s, the intense operational work took its toll on his failing right shoulder, and he eventually decided to leave the operation.

While the new state rules will force farms across the valley to change how they compensate seasonal workers, for Peoria Gardens Arboretum in Albany it will be business as usual.

Elizabeth Peña is the supervisor at Peoria Gardenswhich has offered overtime pay for decades.

“For me, the way I look at it keeps people around me,” Peña said as she sat in a large room wrapping the nursery. She added that it is a work that requires physical effort and is difficult for the body.

Peña, who started working in Peoria 28 years ago as a seasonal worker, said the extra work helped her as a single mother of four, despite the sacrifices she made being away from her children.

“A little extra makes me feel like I can breathe now,” she said.

It is a matter of fairness to Peoria Gardens owner Ben Verhoeven. He took over operations from his father, who established the nursery in the 1980s, which has since become a medium-sized greenhouse selling flowers and vegetables.

The nursery currently employs 26 employees who grow young plants in full-size pots, irrigate, package and ship nursery products to western and central Oregon and western Washington.

But during the spring peak season, the company adds about 25 more sets of hands to meet demand from independent garden centers.

“As any farmer will tell you, you have to make hay when the sun is up,” Verhoeven said.

“It could mean long working hours, and employees have to stay on till work is done,” he said. “For my employees’ families to thrive, they must be compensated for their extra time and effort.”

“It was a controversial topic, and I can respect that,” Verhoeven added, acknowledging differing opinions about the new overtime requirements among ranchers.

But it’s also a topic he ran into last year, as one of many advocates pressing for passage of the overtime bill.

“Is it fair that a mother, who works harvesting on the farm, should be denied overtime pay, while her son gets paid while driving an Amazon truck during the Christmas rush?” Verhoeven wrote in a statement to the Joint Farm Workers Overtime Committee last year.

He also wrote that requiring employers to pay overtime would level the playing field between small farms and their Amazon-like counterparts.

Of course, not everyone shares Verhoeven’s point of view.

Anne Kramer-Steenkamp, ​​who owns and operates Berries Northwest, believes the new law will be harmful to both farmers and farm workers.

She said her operation covers about 500 acres of blueberries across the state, including a farm in Albany.

It employs a full-time staff of about 15 people, usually 250 to 300 seasonal workers, who either pick berries by hand or operate the combines.

She said that during peak seasons, it is common for workers, both permanent and seasonal, to work 60 to 70 hours a week, with pickup workers earning an hourly rate of about $20 to $25 – although they are actually paid in pounds, she says. He said. That is, unless they collect enough berries to make minimum wage, in which case they are paid by the hour.

“Most workers will be paid more than the minimum wage,” she said.

But so far this season, it has cut staff hours and hired more seasonal workers, so that no one works more than 55 hours a week — the maximum overtime this year. Kramer Steenkamp said she couldn’t push the time and a half.

“It was a pain in the ass,” she said.

In her own letter to the legislature last year opposing the law, the sixth-generation farmer said the bill would cost her $350,000 to $500,000 in new labor costs.

Another point of contention: the law’s tax credits, designed to offset the cost of the new benefit to farmers.

These credits vary depending on the number of FTE workers the farm employs and the type of farming practiced. For example, a dairy farmer can get a tax break of up to 100% of overtime wages paid if she employs fewer than 25 full-time employees.

But those credits will also be phased out over the next few years. This year, for example, non-dairy farmers can get tax breaks of up to 90% of their overtime wages paid. But by 2028, those same farmers may only get 60%, or even 15% if they employ more than 50 people.

These employees do no service to Kramer-Steinkamp during the harvest season.

“I don’t even qualify for these packages,” she said.

She had hoped that lawmakers would include a “seasonal” exception in the bill, preventing the overtime rule from being applied during peak harvest times, when workers work their longest hours.

The harvest crisis has historically been a justification for excluding farm workers from overtime benefits, according to Oregon State University applied economics professor Tim Delbridge.

He said farmers have to work according to a crop schedule, rather than during a neat 40-hour work week, in contrast to the limited flexibility farmers have with workers in the auto industry, who don’t have to worry about parts rotting in assembly. Line.