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CapitalPress.com
January 29, 2016
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Opinion
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Editor
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Joe Beach
Carl Sampson
opinions@capitalpress.com Online: www.capitalpress.com/opinion
O ur V iew
Higher minimum wages would hurt rural West
A
busload of Eastern
Oregon farmers and
business owners recently
rode 400 miles across the state
to the Capitol in Salem to plead
with the Legislature not to
cripple their businesses.
Lawmakers have been
debating proposals to raise the
minimum wage in Oregon. As is
the case in several other states,
pressure is being put on them
to raise the minimum wage. In
the West, initiatives are planned
in several states to vote on
increasing the minimum wage.
The delegation from Malheur
County in Eastern Oregon
reminded lawmakers that a
wage that may be realistic
in a high cost-of-living area
such as Portland is way out of
line in Eastern Oregon — and
anywhere else in the rural West.
The cost of living in most
rural areas is a fraction of that
in urban areas. For example,
the average cost of a house in
Portland is about $271,000.
The average cost of a house
in Eastern Oregon is about
$105,000.
Housing is the major
influence on the cost of living.
Legislators were also told
that in Idaho, which is adjacent
to Eastern Oregon, the minimum
wage is $7.25 an hour. Oregon
businesses are already at a
disadvantage because their
state’s minimum wage is $2
higher than Idaho’s.
If Oregon’s minimum wage
was increased and businesses
were forced to pay a minimum
wage nearly double Idaho’s
wage, businesses would be put
squarely between an economic
rock and a hard place.
One of those who testified
at the Capitol was Owyhee
Produce General Manager Shay
Myers. He said that if Oregon
increases its minimum wage,
it will force his onion packing
facility to automate or move to
Idaho. Either option would kill
Oregon jobs, he said.
Myers told the legislators that
increasing Oregon’s minimum
wage to $13.50 would increase
Owyhee Produce’s overall
costs by 10 percent, while the
company’s profit margin is only
8 percent.
You do the math.
Artificially increasing
the cost of doing business in
Oregon — or Washington or
any other state — will hurt
rural businesses. Those who
are pushing a $13.50 or $15 an
hour minimum wage lose sight
of how economics work. That
extra money will come out of
the bottom lines of businesses
across the state. In many
cases, that bottom line would
disappear.
Those seeking higher
minimum wages statewide want
to use other people’s money to
make political points with their
supporters.
But by the time they are
done, the result will be fewer
jobs, fewer businesses and a
weaker rural economy.
That’s a result legislators
must avoid.
Foreign worker visas
in need of revision
By KATIE HEGER
For the Capital Press
P
Rik Dalvit/For the Capital Press
O ur V iew
Land management issues remain
ederal and state officials
effectively altered the
occupation of the Malheur
National Wildlife Refuge Tuesday,
arresting eight protesters and killing a
ninth in a shootout.
The protesters had demanded that
two Harney County ranchers serving
five-year sentences for burning
federal land be released, and that
federal public lands be turned over
to the state, the county and to private
ownership. It was a futile endeavor
from the start that lacked any legal
basis.
For better or worse, the occupation
did draw some national attention to
legitimate issues concerning the U.S.
government’s management of its vast
holding of public lands.
Now what?
It will be all too easy for many
casual observers East of the Rockies,
and even a good many in the liberal
urban centers of the West, to dismiss
all of this as the machinations of a
half-cocked collection of religious
zealots, disenfranchised Reubens and
anti-government nuts with too many
guns and a crazy interpretation of the
Constitution.
F
Unfortunately, that would miss the
real underlying issues.
The standoff is diminished, but
the anger and frustration of many
farmers, ranchers and lumbermen
in Harney County and throughout
the West remains unchanged. Their
interests must now be pressed in the
court of public opinion, and non-
Westerners made to understand the
real issues.
The federal government holds
more than half the land in the West.
The economic and civic fabric of
rural communities depends on trees
cut from the forest, livestock grazed on
the range and minerals gleaned from
the mining claims.
The government once encouraged
these activities in the service of the
country’s growing population and
in fulfillment of its manifest destiny.
Now, policies have changed and that
same government seems to be draining
the lifeblood of the rural West.
Many in the rural West don’t
think their government listens to
them and that their concerns are
given short shrift. They believe that
their livelihoods, their very way of
life, are in the hands of bureaucrats
controlled by interests outside their
communities.
They don’t understand how the
government can claim to be a good
steward while it lets its forests
fill with fuel that feeds ever more
terrible wildfires that destroy the
very habitat it seeks to protect. They
bristle at what they perceive to be
the mismanagement of these fires
that causes their own property to be
damaged or destroyed.
They are stymied at every turn by
the inertia that attends every decision,
every necessary action on a grazing
allotment or timber harvest. They are
tired of the endless environmental
litigation that seems bent on driving
even the most conservation-minded
producers off public lands.
They watch as their government
adds to its empire, using taxpayer
money to outbid local buyers and take
more land off the tax roles, and erode
private economic opportunities.
They want to be good stewards,
to do the right thing. But they want a
fair shake.
Now is the time to tell these
stories, to tell America that rural
western lives matter.
eople are needed to keep
a farm running. From
repair tasks to driv-
ing machinery and checking
crops — there’s no shortage
of work to be done.
Seems simple, right? But
farm work is real labor. It’s
not easy. The job doesn’t in-
clude an ergonomic chair, cu-
bicle, scheduled vacation or
sick days. Farm work requires
long days in often undesirable
weather conditions and comes
with an unpredictable sched-
ule. It requires ongoing train-
ing, knowledge of crops and
how they grow, plus many
hours of twisting, turning,
bending, climbing, shoveling
and heavy lifting. There’s no
way around it: It is labor and
most Americans do not want
to do it.
Our farm has run into a
worker shortage for the past
13 years. We advertise in local
papers and spread the word
through our neighbors. We
have offered bonuses and addi-
tional benefits, but get minimal
response. We have been unable
to hire any of the people who
respond, and we are left each
year looking to hire qualified
foreign seasonal labor through
the H-2A ag worker visa pro-
gram and the H-2B visa pro-
gram.
When I reflect on the pro-
cess, all I can say is that it is
cumbersome, untimely, expen-
sive, uncertain, and ultimately
lacks an understanding of ag-
riculture and our labor needs.
Over the years, the amount of
personal, business and farm
production information we have
to present to prove our need for
labor increases. But the speed of
getting visas cleared does not.
The time frame for approval and
having an employee arrive and
ready to work has become un-
manageable and costly.
We start the application
process months in advance,
adhere to dates and guidelines
requested and then wait for
someone at the Department
of Labor — with little to no
knowledge of farming in my
region — to approve, deny or
delay a request. We have had
employees arrive anywhere
Guest
comment
Katie Heger
from three days to one month
after the date we needed them.
This simply doesn’t work. We
cannot run a business without
people to help get the work
done. When our employees
arrive significantly late, our
time frame for training to en-
sure safety procedures are fol-
lowed is condensed, and our
ability to get a crop planted
and cared for is hindered.
The H-2A worker program
has faults. For example, the
workers are only able to work
for nine months. This pres-
ents a problem for us since we
farm year-round: preparing
soil, planting, caring for the
crops, harvesting and hauling
our crop to point of sale. An-
other issue with the program
is that we are not guaranteed
to be approved for hiring year
after year, and even if we are
approved, we do not know
if we will be able to hire the
same employees back.
This causes a lot of stress
and uncertainty. We can’t af-
ford to not know who will be
on our workforce. Initial train-
ing, orientation and licensing
take a lot of time. Time we
can’t afford to take away from
running our business.
A revised ag worker visa
program is desperately needed
and needs to include options
for year-round employment,
renewability of employment,
and should account for rea-
sonable wages, manageable
expenses and additional ben-
efits like housing, transporta-
tion and meals. Foreign labor
is not just a need for select
states or specific sectors of
farming; it is a need for all. I
begin my farm’s journey into
2016 hopeful that change will
be made and that we will be
able to hire a dependable,
willing workforce.
Katie Heger, an advocate
for agriculture, blogs at
hegerfamilyfarms.wordpress.
com. She and her husband
farm in central North Dakota.
Her column appears courtesy
of the American Farm Bureau
Federation.
Readers’ views
Why are feds
making example
of Hammonds?
Isn’t it wonderful that
we live in Oregon where
we can kill an innocent un-
born baby and give a per-
son all the tools they need
to help them end their own
life, but if we burn up a
sagebrush we will be hit
with a stiff jail sentence.
Our federal judges call it
domestic terrorism to burn
sagebrush on federal land,
except when the govern-
ment does it.
I’m
a
79-year-old
rancher and I’ve been try-
ing to get rid of sagebrush
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all my life by every meth-
od imaginable, including
fire, and if sometimes I
was successful, the grass
and forage came back so
much better.
How many times have
we watched the federal
firefighters run the locals
off of a small fire that they
had under control and they
do backfires and with their
inaction, generate it into
a fire that would burn for
weeks.
How many times did
their backfires burn up pri-
vate ground and livestock?
So why is the federal
government so insistent
on making an example out
of the Hammond family?
They did their time and are
paying the price.
Why are they so dogged
and relentless in spending
so much time and mon-
ey in trying to continue
to persecute one family?
Could it have anything to
do with a water right case
the Feds lost to the Ham-
monds a few years back,
and they are trying to get
revenge? Could it be the
Feds covet the Hammonds’
property next door to
the refuge and on Steens
Mountain?
The government has
deep pockets when they go
after private citizens and
it makes one wonder why
they want to extend their
authority so hard on one
single family.
I’ve known the Ham-
mond family since they
moved to Frenchglen and
Diamond about 50 years
ago, and they are good,
honest people and certain-
ly not terrorists. We need
to ask ourselves why the
federal government is re-
leasing thousands of con-
victed felons and are so
relentless in trying to send
one of our hard-working,
tax-paying neighbors to
jail, especially after they
have already served their
time.
Why aren’t our con-
gressmen looking into this
travesty of the government
taking away their BLM
permits and trying to steal
their property?
I’m wondering how
you would feel, wheth-
er government worker or
private citizen, to be hung
twice for the same crime,
to justify the federal gov-
ernment stealing your
property.
Help me make some
sense of all this.
Jerry Miller
Crane, Ore.