Lawmakers are considering a bill that would give agricultural workers a seat at the table. House Bill 2548 would establish a board made up of voices representing farmworkers, farmers, government agencies and labor law to help establish working standards and conditions. Reyna Lopez, executive director of PCUN, which is supporting the bill and Jenny Dresler, spokesperson for the Oregon Farm Bureau, which is opposed to the bill, join us to share their perspectives.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Oregon lawmakers are considering a bill right now that would give agricultural workers and their bosses seats at the regulatory table. House Bill 2548 would establish a board made up of people representing farmworkers, farm owners, government agencies and labor law to help establish working standards and conditions.
Reyna Lopez is the executive director of PCUN, a farmworkers union that supports the bill. Jenny Dresler is a spokesperson for the Oregon Farm Bureau, which is opposed to it. They both join us now. It’s great to have both of you on Think Out Loud.
Reyna Lopez: Thanks for having us.
Jenny Dresler: Thank you.
Miller: Reyna, first – what is a workforce labor standards board?
Lopez: Thanks, Dave, the Farmworker Standards Board would help create consistent working conditions for the over 72,000 workers who pick our berries, tend to our Christmas trees and they harvest our grapes across the state. As you may have heard before, in my story, I’m a daughter of farmworkers who labored and helped grow our beautiful Oregon Christmas trees. We moved up in the ‘80s, following the migration of Christmas trees, actually.
My parents took a lot of pride in their work. They worked 50-60 hour weeks for low wages, no health insurance. Sometimes those conditions were unsafe, and they did this so my sister and I could have a better life. These conditions impacted my whole family, not just my parents. My Uncle Ray lost an arm working at a mushroom farm in Salem in the early 2000′s, and that was a really dark and devastating time for my family.
But we really brought this forward because we believe that farmworkers deserve the same dignity and respect at work as every other Oregon employee, but yet we’re excluded from the right to collectively bargain with our employers. So the Farmworker Standards Board would really give farmworkers a voice in creating safer working conditions, training standards, which we feel are very important, and also protection against wage theft and workplace retaliations.
Miller: Jenny Dresler, before we get to your opposition to the board itself, I just want to get your take on Reyna Lopez’s premise. Do you agree that there is a workforce standards problem that needs to be addressed?
Dresler: I disagree that there is a workforce standards problem that needs to be addressed. What Reyna spoke to is an exemption from the National Labor Relations Act for farm work. But over the last few decades, I’ve been a part of forums on behalf of Oregon Farm Bureau, alongside Reyna and her predecessors at PCUN and other representatives of farm workers, adopting some of the strongest workplace protections for farmworkers in the country.
We’ve negotiated paid family and medical leave, minimum wage requirements, retaliation discrimination protections, really robust workplace safety regulations, a very long list of protections. So yeah, I disagree with the premise that she is speaking to today. We spent decades working together to create a safer work environment.
Miller: In your testimony, you included, Jenny, a five-pager outlining what you point to as workplace protections that are already on the books. We, obviously, don’t have time to go through all of that. But can you give us a representative sense for what you think shows that there is not a shortage of workplace protections already? You outlined a few there. I’m hoping you can give us a better sense for some of the specifics.
Dresler: In 2016, the Oregon Legislature heard from stakeholders across the state, including PCUN and SEIU, the state employee union, and adopted one of the higher minimum wages at the time across the country. Our minimum wage increases are tied to CPI, so they are indexed to inflation. What that means, it essentially creates a minimum wage increase year over year. So that’s one of the regulations that was passed by the legislature.
There was a law that, I believe, was passed at least five years ago which strengthened workplace discrimination and retaliation protections. That bill was brought forward by many groups including PCUN and resulted in Oregon’s Workplace Fairness Act, which, again, is one of the stronger laws in the nation protecting all workers from potential discrimination or harassment in the workplace.
And then, just in 2022, the Oregon Legislature adopted agricultural overtime regulations that phases in a 40-hour work week for farmworkers. And again, that was a bill that PCUN and other representatives of farmworker groups brought forward. And I think that all of these different laws show that the legislature is providing a forum to have this conversation and ensure that farmworkers have the same protections as other workers.
Miller: Reyna, what’s your response to Jenny’s argument here that there are already lots of regulations on the books in Oregon, some that apply to all Oregon workers and others that are now specific to farmworkers?
Lopez: Yeah, thanks, Dave. We really want to continue to work together with the Farm Bureau to ensure that 72,000-plus Oregonians, who are working on farms, have safer working conditions and that they’re protected from retaliation. And we did work a lot with the Farm Bureau on these basic steps. These basic steps improve working conditions. And they opposed all of these things. They fought against a minimum wage for people who were laboring under 100-degree heat. They fought against workers being paid their overtime, even after 50 hours a week. And they fought against farm workers receiving only five paid sick days a year.
For us, this is really about having common sense measures and oversight for folks. Because it’s life-threatening for 72,000-plus Oregonians working on farms to not have these protections, things that we worked on like extreme working conditions that took the life of Sebastian Francisco Perez, who collapsed in a 114-degree heat while moving irrigation lines on a farm and nursery in St. Paul. We raised these concerns before, and the Farm Bureau fought against those, calling it too much regulation ...
Miller: But you were successful in those cases, right …
Lopez: Yes.
Miller: … in terms of smoke, heat, agricultural overtime, higher minimum wage. As Jenny pointed out, she didn’t say that your organization was not always in support of these. But, Jenny, you did say they’re on the books. Reyna, I guess I’m just wondering what’s an example of a new workplace regulation that you think you can’t get now under the current system, that a new board, this new board would enable you to get?
Lopez: I think that again and again, we’re hearing from farmworkers that they want a voice in creating safer working conditions, training standards, and protection against wage theft and workplace retaliation. As you heard, farmworkers are excluded from collective bargaining rights through the National Labor Relations Act. We were also excluded from the Fair Labor Standards Act, which is why we’ve had to pass things one at a time.
But another important part of this is just cause firings, a just cause policy that would help mitigate the rampant unjust firings of workers, which right now is silencing a lot of employees who want a voice at the table with their employers. Even just in the last few months, as we’ve been talking to farmworkers about the importance of having a board. We heard about a Marion County farm story where a female employee, who I will leave the name confidential, was sexually assaulted by her supervisor. And when she complained about it, she ended up being the one who got fired. And a bunch of the other female employees also were let go.
And sadly, these women’s experiences are not unique. But we feel that a farmworker board could create a place to work together with employers to be able to address these issues that are happening on the work site, together, so that we can ensure workplace protections and standards that are for all employees who work on farms in Oregon.
Miller: You just brought up a lot of issues. I want to come back to this very important one, serious one you made about sexual assault allegations. But before that, you talked about another piece of this bill, which would prohibit employees from firing workers without just cause, with some exceptions.
Jenny Dresler, do you oppose that?
Dresler: Yes, the Oregon Farm Bureau strongly opposes that measure. It essentially takes and ties our hands and our ability to manage our workplaces. The case that Reyna laid out, or the circumstances, are definitely unacceptable. But that would already be illegal to terminate. It already is illegal under Oregon law to terminate an employee for whistleblowing or to discriminate or retaliation in any way by terminating that employee. That’s already illegal and actionable. That’s already protected, even under an at-will employment scenario.
I think the issue for us, in eliminating at-will employment just for agriculture, and not for any other sector, but just for agriculture, and mandating for cause termination, is that agriculture is so incredibly uncertain. In Oregon, especially, our growing seasons tend to be very short. A heat incident or poor yields in any given year can really limit what the farm is able to harvest, and can even limit the marketability.
So employers, especially in agriculture with all of the uncertainty related to extreme weather, climate change, and pests and disease pressures, need to be able to make decisions about whether or not they can hire and/or terminate employees when circumstances are out of their control. And they’re often out of their control in agriculture. So for us, that provision just doesn’t make much sense in an agricultural setting, particularly. The economics not only don’t allow for us to make those determinations, but just the general needs of growing and producing commodities, whether that’s livestock or crops, you just don’t know what any given year is gonna hold and what your workforce needs are gonna be. And they could change quite suddenly.
Miller: Reyna, I want to go back to you. As Jenny just said, the example that you mentioned there, about an alleged sexual assault and then the retaliation after that was brought to the attention of people there, she says that’s already against the law in a variety of ways. So what would the board change, in terms of existing regulations and the ability of people who have serious workplace complaints to bring those concerns forward?
Lopez: As you may or may not know, PCUN also has a worker center attached to our organization. Many folks, a vast majority of folks, are coming in complaining about retaliation. And a big part of the themes we hear is that farmworkers want a voice in creating safer working conditions. Training standards are a really important thing as well. I could imagine a world where the Farm Bureau and when we’re coming together to actually set a schedule for trainings for our workers. Many of them want to be able to have that development given to them. [They] want to be able to be a part of the solution for the farm industry. They don’t want to cause the problem.
We greatly value Oregon’s vital farms. As we know, over 96% of them are family-owned. But farmworkers are also the backbone of Oregon’s agricultural industry. And they want to feel like they have a voice at their workplace. We believe that employees deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, and it starts with being able to have that voice with their employers.
Unfortunately, that’s not the case at most farms. I know that some growers are really great and they try to really create that space for people. But it’s not the reality for the entire sector. As we know, the average farmworker makes just over $34,000 a year. That’s just really not a living wage in Oregon. And we want to make sure to be able to be part of those solutions, but also bring together a space in life that we have collective bargaining rights, where we can come together and solve those problems together.
Miller: Jenny, the point that we’ve heard from Reyna, a few different times now, is that this board would be a place where farmworkers, farm owners, regulators would all have a seat at the table, would come together to craft policies. What’s wrong, in your mind, with that basic premise?
Dresler: I think the basic premise isn’t reflected in the bill or in the amendments. What this is, on its face, is a bill that creates an unelected and unaccountable board, not even accountable to the public or the legislature, for essentially mandating different employment conditions or different wages. So there is no ceiling to what this board can adopt in terms of regulations related to wages, working hours or safety standards. There’s no way to take this boards’ decisions back to the legislature and ask [if] this is a reasonable application of the board’s granted authority.
We’re also confused as to why the legislature would abdicate this authority anyway. We’ve been working with them, again through the legislative process, over the last several decades or many, many decades, to address protections and workplace standards in the agricultural setting. So one of our primary concerns is there’s no limit to what this board can do. It’s a regulatory board. It’s not a forum for a conversation as has been discussed.
Miller: Jenny, how is the farm industry impacted currently by existing regulations?
Dresler: I think I’ll explain that by characterizing the economic status of agriculture. Agriculture in Oregon is an industry that is primarily considered to be price-taking. That means that they don’t set the prices for the commodities that they produce. The market does. Whether it’s the domestic market or the international market, or the grocery store, they’re going to determine what they’re willing to pay for that pear you grow or for that asparagus that is grown.
So, I guess with that lens, we don’t really have the ability, if the board, for instance, decides to set a $30 an hour minimum wage, farms have absolutely no ability to go find that money. They can’t request it from buyers. They’d be operating at a loss.
The problem is they’re already operating at a loss. The last five years, for many commodities, have faced significant cash losses. We’ve had weather events that have destroyed crops. We had really poor yields across multiple commodities in 2023. And when you look at the number of entities or farms and ranches in Oregon that are operating at a loss today, and then the incredible regulatory burden that we face, firms just don’t have a way to control and manage all of these new mandates, without either reducing worker hours, laying off some workers or looking to mechanize.
We’ve seen that play out in the agricultural overtime law that passed. There was just a study out of California Berkeley that showed that, as California phased in overtime, the workers now take home $100 less a week than they did prior to the overtime lobbying in effect.
That doesn’t speak to the merits of the overtime law, but it speaks to the economics of this sector. Money just, to say a pun, money does not grow on trees. Farms have a very, very, very limited ability to be able to recoup the costs ...
Miller: Reyna, let me give you a chance to respond. Jenny’s essential point here is that she fears the creation of this board would lead to more regulations that could put more farms out of business and more farmworkers out of jobs. That’s the short version of what I just heard. What’s your response?
Lopez: Again, we want to work together to ensure that Oregonians working on farms have safer working conditions and protections from retaliation. But I want to address a few of the things I heard. One was about the legislature and that it would be setting a ceiling. The Oregon Legislature would still have the ability to set the floor, but the board will have the opportunity to make that better, make anything better that comes out of the legislature. They would always be able to set the floor.
And when it comes to the agricultural economic side of things, the reality here is that mechanization has been happening way before we passed farmworker overtime or any of the minimum wage requirements. This is unfortunately something that is completely out of our control.
When it comes to some of the places where there are price-makers, price-takers and all of that – Oregon is actually leading the way on prices when it comes to some of our industries, especially when it comes to Christmas trees. We’re the number one seller of Christmas trees in the entire world.
I understand that there are weather events and thing after thing that’s coming and is out of our control. But, again, we want to make sure that the intention of this space is to really be able to work together to make these things happen. And I believe that the Farm Bureau and PCUN will have a lot of say in who can be on this board, and will be doing what we need to do to be able to have proper representation on that board from employers and employees.
Miller: Jenny Dresler and Reyna Lopez, thanks very much.
Reyna Lopez is the executive director of PCUN, Oregon’s union for farmworkers and tree planters. Jenny Dresler is a spokesperson for the Oregon Farm Bureau.
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