Business AgLife
B
Thursday, March 11, 2021
The Observer & Baker City Herald
Union County
leads Eastern
Oregon in one
year jobless
increase
Oregon adds 8,300
nonfarm jobs in January
The Observer
LA GRANDE — Unemploy-
ment from January 2020 to Jan-
uary 2021 increased in all Eastern
Oregon counties, but the largest
over-the-year increase came in
Union County.
The Oregon Employment
Department reported Tuesday,
March 9, that unemployment in
Union County hit 7.8% in Jan-
uary, a rise in the raw rate of 2
percentage points from the same
period the year before. Baker
County’s rate was 4.1% in Jan-
uary 2020 and increased to 5.6%
in January 2021. Wallowa County
in that span had the smallest
increase, where the raw rate rose
0.7 percentage point to 7.4%.
The seasonally adjusted unem-
ployment rate increased in five
Eastern Oregon counties and was
unchanged in one.
Again, Union County had the
largest increase, rising 1.8 per-
centage points to 6% with 732
people unemployed and 9,820
working in nonfarm jobs. Harney
County saw the smallest increase
over the year, rising 0.7 per-
centage point to 5.0%. Baker
County’s seasonally adjusted
rate of 5.6% means 419 people
are unemployed and 5,230 are
working in nonfarm jobs. Wal-
lowa County was unchanged at
5%, with 182 in the unemploy-
ment line and 2,460 working in
nonfarm jobs.
Unemployment in North-
eastern Oregon and across the
state peaked in April 2020, when
the rate hit 13.2% for the state,
12.8% in Wallowa County, 13.2%
in Baker County and a whopping
18.6% in Union County, the worst
at the time in Eastern Oregon.
The statewide unemployment
rate edged down to 6.2% in Jan-
uary from 6.3%, as revised, in
See, Jobless/Page 2B
Alex Wittwer/The Observer
Red Cross United Drug Store front end manager Misty Golden pauses for a portrait Tuesday, March 9, 2021, in a side room at the store in
downtown La Grande. The drug store is undergoing a major remodel, the first in at least 20 years.
Getting a fresh look
Red Cross United Drug Store in La Grande undergoes major remodel
By DICK MASON
The Observer
LA GRANDE— The interior
of Red Cross United Drug Store
in La Grande is set to receive a
makeover.
The store is preparing to have
major renovation work done for
the first time in at least 20 years.
“I can’t wait (for the renova-
tion work to start). It is much
needed. The updating will really
brighten things up,” said Misty
Golden, the store’s front end
manager.
The revamp work includes
repainting the store’s interior.
The store’s paint, much of which
is green, will be replaced by a
coat of a color to be determined
later, Golden said.
“It will be brighter, that is for
sure,” she said.
She said Red Cross Drug
United Store’s green paint dates
back to the 1980s.
“It is outdated,” Golden said.
The drug store’s carpeted
floor also is recieving a new
look. The store’s blue carpet
will be removed and replaced by
flooring. Golden said the store’s
carpeting is beginning to fray.
A third project will involve
one of the store’s two pharma-
cies, its retail and institutional
long term care pharmacy, which
serves assisted living centers.
Plans call for the retail pharmacy,
which is outside the institutional
IF YOU GO
WHAT: Red Cross Drug Store
WHERE: 1123 Adams Ave.,
La Grande
CONTACT: 541-963-5741
OF NOTE: The store will remain
open during remodeling.
pharmacy, to be moved out fur-
ther into the main store area.
“By extending out both phar-
macies, they will each have more
room to grow,” Golden said.
This growth will include
the addition of more rooms for
giving shots, for pharmacists to
consult with people about drugs
and the use of health supplements
and more.
Additional space will be
needed in the store to allow for
the planned renovation work to
be completed. To create this Red
Cross United Drug is clearing out
a significant amount of merchan-
dise via a remodeling sale.
A date has not been set for the
renovation work to start, but this
much is certain, the store’s hours
will not be cut back while the
work is done.
“We are not closing, we will
be open throughout the remod-
eling,” Golden said.
The process of planning for
the renovation work is being com-
plicated by the state’s COVID-19
social distancing rules.
“Planning all this has been a
little wild,” Golden said.
Critics claim overtime bill would hurt farm workers
State’s carbon cap
program takes shape
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
Plan is simpler than earlier versions that
Senate Republicans protested against
By TED SICKINGER
The Oregonian/OregonLive
SALEM — After
Republicans bolted from
the 2020 legislative ses-
sion and once again killed
Oregon’s controversial bill
to regulate greenhouse
gas emissions, a frus-
trated Gov. Kate Brown
issued an executive order
for state agencies to draft
carbon reduction rules
that would achieve the
same goals.
Namely, to reduce Ore-
gon’s greenhouse gas
emissions by 45% below
1990 levels by 2035 and
80% below those levels by
2050.
Those plans are now
taking shape, and the
heavy lifting will come
from the Department of
Environmental Quality,
which has the authority
to regulate emissions
from transportation fuels,
industry, and electric and
natural gas utilities. The
Environmental Quality
Commission appointed a
34-member advisory com-
mittee to help hash out the
rules with a goal to have a
program up and running
by the beginning of next
year.
It’s a potentially
unwieldy panel with rep-
resentation from environ-
mental and community
groups, affected industries
and companies, tribes and
local government. Reg-
ulated businesses are
already raising concerns
about the costs of com-
plying with the program.
Environmental groups,
meanwhile, point to the
industry-heavy makeup
of the advisory council.
They’re concerned that
electric utilities and some
transportation fuel pro-
viders will escape any
regulation under the pro-
gram, and that it could
allow industry to pollute
at higher levels for longer.
“The hope is that DEQ
will be able to course cor-
rect and get this plan on
track to be consistent with
best available science,”
said Zach Baker, Oregon
program manager for Cli-
mate Solutions, one of
the environmental groups
represented on the panel.
The advisory group “has
through June to hammer
out the details and land
the plane, and the more
exemptions we need to
talk about, it starts to raise
concerns about where
this plane will ultimately
land.”
It’s early days yet, but
it’s clear this will be a
simpler, stripped-down
version of the program
that ultimately blew up
two sessions of the Legis-
lature. Gone are the state
auctions of emissions
allowances to polluters,
See, Carbon/Page 3B
SALEM — Critics claim that
requiring Oregon’s agriculture
industry to pay higher overtime
wages would be a “false promise” of
help to farm employees, who’d actu-
ally lose work opportunities.
Unlike most other employers,
farmers don’t have to pay workers
one-and-a-half times their normal
rate if they work more than 40 hours
per week, but House Bill 2358 seeks
to eliminate that exemption.
Proponents of the bill claim it
would end an unjust labor policy with
“racist and exclusionary origins”
while recognizing the essential role
that farm workers have in the state’s
economy and community.
“They do not belong to a lower
class of workers in Oregon,” said
Rep. Ricki Ruiz, D-Gresham, its
chief sponsor. “Exploiting human
beings is never a good thing.”
Supporters argue that agriculture
shouldn’t receive unique treatment
under the law because other indus-
tries, including the construction and
retail sectors, also have peak seasons
with higher labor demands.
California passed a law in 2016
that’s phasing in overtime pay for
farm workers while Washington’s
Supreme Court found that an agricul-
tural exemption to overtime pay was
unconstitutional last year, the bill’s
supporters said.
According to the bill’s proponents,
protections for farm workers were
carved out of the Fair Labor Stan-
dards Act, a seminal 1938 federal
statute, due to a “legacy of racism”
that’s reflected in the state’s overtime
exemption for agriculture.
“It was wrong then, when most
farm workers were black. It is wrong
now, when most farm workers are
Latino,” said Teresa Romero, pres-
ident of the United Farm Workers
union. “Every worker should have
the same basic rights.”
The bill’s detractors argue the
Capital Press, File
Workers at A to Z Wineworks in Newberg sort grapes during the 2014 har-
vest. The 2021 Oregon Legislature is considering a bill that would requite the
agriculture industry to pay higher overtime wages, a move critics contend
would cost farm employees work opportunities.
good intentions behind HB 2358
would fail to materialize in reality
because farmers and ranchers are
“price takers” subject to the com-
modity markets who cannot pass
along higher costs to their customers.
Farmers cannot afford to pay
higher overtime wages and will
instead seek to avoid work sched-
ules longer than 40 hours per week
by increasing the number of shifts,
shifting to less labor-intensive crops,
increasing mechanization, or moving
out-of-state, according to the bill’s
opponents.
“I think you may find you’re
hurting my employees rather than
helping them,” said Chuck Thomsen,
R-Hood River, who grows pears.
Critics of HB 2358 said the
exemption for agriculture is nec-
essary because the industry faces
short, weather-dependent windows in
which work must be completed.
Oregon’s cost of doing business
is increasing and the state already
has strong protections for workers,
such as paid sick leave and a higher
minimum wage, while the growing
season is relatively short, said Jenny
Dresler, lobbyist for the Oregon Farm
Bureau.
An amendment to the bill could
also penalize employers for even
slight pay miscalculations, she said.
A survey of the Oregon Wine-
growers Association found that only
10% of its members could absorb
the additional costs of paying higher
overtime wages, said Brooke Delmas
Robertson, a representative of the
group whose family owns a vineyard
in Northeast Oregon.
Jake Madison, a farmer near
Echo, said the organic market cur-
rently offers a desirable premium but
his operation may have to change
practices for crops that require hand-
weeding, since herbicide spraying is
more labor-efficient.
“It’s going to come down to strict
cost control measures on this,” he said.