Friday, August 13, 2021
CapitalPress.com 5
Labor Secretary gets earful on
Oregon farmworker conditions
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
Ryan Brennecke/EO Media Group
Drought is impacting many cattle producers this year.
Drought taking toll on ranchers
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CHAPTER 87 
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COPART OF WASHINGTON INC 
2885 NATIONAL WAY WOODBURN, OR 
2019 SUBA IMP SW
VIN = 4S3GTAC67K3742800
Amount due on lien $1515.00 
Reputed owner(s)
KRISTINA OTT
ALLY BK
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2885 NATIONAL WAY WOODBURN, OR 
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TERESSA ROSE PINTO
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RIVERMARK COMMUNITY C.U
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following vehicle will be  sold,
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at 10:00am by 
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MENDEZ SANCHEZ
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to go bigger than that,” he
said.
Roundtable
panelists
said the coronavirus pan-
demic has aggravated prob-
lems that existed before in
the farm industry, such as
workers fearing to report
labor violations due to
potential retaliation.
The possibility of los-
ing a job doesn’t seem
worthwhile when employ-
ers would only receive
nominal fi nes for violating
safety protocols, said Val-
entin Sanchez, senior com-
munity educator with the
Oregon Law Center.
Oregon’s Occupational
Safety and Health Admin-
istration is infl uenced by
the federal OSHA, but that
agency’s standards are out-
dated, he said.
“We are setting the bar
so low,” Sanchez said.
Sanchez urged more
funding for on-site inspec-
tions as well as recognition
that many farmworkers
speak indigenous lan-
guages, not Spanish.
“We need to develop
educational
materials
in these different lan-
guages,” he said.
Farmers are increasingly
reliant on labor contractors
for hiring, which eff ectively
makes them less responsi-
ble for worker safety, said
Jennifer
Martinez-Me-
dina, a doctoral candidate
at Portland State University
who facilitated a study on
coronavirus impacts.
Though farmers are
jointly liable with contrac-
tors for following labor law,
the system creates another
hindrance for workers to
report violations, she said.
Labor contractors and
personnel agencies are also
less accountable for violat-
ing regulations, she said.
“Farm labor contractors
can dissolve and come back
with a diff erent name.”
Apart from the farm-
worker roundtable, Walsh
toured a training facility for
plumbers and steamfi tters
in Springfi eld, Ore.
He joked that he’d
planned to visit farms unan-
nounced but appreciated
the input from the roundta-
ble instead.
“Let me work on this
stuff ,” Walsh said.
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The
unprecedented
drought across the West is
taxing ranchers with tight
feed and forage supplies and
forcing them to make tough
decisions about their ani-
mals and operations.
Niels Hansen, president
of the Public Lands Coun-
cil and a Rawlings, Wyo.,
rancher, said he has heard
mixed reports from ranch-
ers in his region about the
drought’s impact.
“Some people are getting
some rain and doing pretty
good and holding on, and
a lot of people are hurting
really bad,” he said during
a webinar hosted by Farm
Journal.
“We’ve seen people mak-
ing major adjustments as far
back as April to changing
their plans, maybe moving
stock off the ranch,” he said.
A friend of his was feed-
ing hay to his cows clear
into June, waiting for his
high country to improve so
he could turn them out on
the range, he said.
“We get reports simi-
lar to that all over, and I’m
sure everybody is in the
same boat that we’re all sit-
ting here now and looking
Mateusz Perkowski/Capital Press
U.S. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh at a farmworker
roundtable Aug. 10 in Eugene, Ore.
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“So it’s a very dire situa-
tion,” he said.
It’s a similar situation in
Eastern Oregon — maybe a
little behind North Dakota,
said Jason Johnson, who
manages Producers Live-
stock Marketing and runs a
backgrounding operation in
Vale, Ore.
“We’ve been able to gen-
erate some crops this year,
but we’re going to be run-
ning on empty here real
shortly,” he said.
Producers in the area
will probably be able to get
through this year, but they’re
going to be in a tough situa-
tion next year if they don’t
get some signifi cant rainfall
and a good winter, he said.
A lot of smaller opera-
tors, with jobs in town, are
getting out due to the cost of
feed and total lack of outside
forage, he said.
“The bigger operations,
they’re going to make it
through. It’s going to be a
bit of a struggle, but they’re
going to hang in there,” he
said.
Some guys are feeding
hay right now, and that’s
a big problem. So much
expense is going into calves
that it’s not going to be eco-
nomical for very long, or it’s
not already, he said.
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toward the future and trying
to get down what these feed
costs are going to be for the
winter so that we can make
plans in that direction,” he
said.
“We’re all struggling and
just trying to work our way
through,” he said.
Others on the webinar
reported similar situations.
“It’s a dire situation,” said
Larry Schnell, partner and
general manager of Stock-
men’s Livestock Exchange
in Dickinson, N.D.
“The older ranchers are
telling us that this is as bad
as they’ve seen it,” he said.
The last decent rains in
the region were in Septem-
ber 2019, and that got ranch-
ers through 2020 with close
to half their usual hay crop.
But it’s a diff erent story
this year, he said.
“A lot of people aren’t
even cutting it. But if they’re
cutting it at all, they’re
talking about one bale per
acre — some of them less
than that. They’re talking
about acres per bale,” he
said.
As for other feed, there’s
more corn in the area than
there used to be, but the
nitrates are very high. The
same is true for wheat and
other grains, he said.
By CAROL RYAN DUMAS
Capital Press
EUGENE, Ore. — As
the former mayor of a major
American city, U.S. Labor
Secretary Marty Walsh
admits he faces a steep
learning curve regarding
farmworker regulations.
“This area is kind of
new to me. They don’t have
farms in Boston,” Walsh
said Aug. 10 during a
roundtable on farmworker
protections in Eugene, Ore.
However, Walsh said he
appreciates the hard work
that goes into agriculture,
as both his parents grew up
on farms in Ireland before
immigrating to the U.S. in
the 1950s.
“I know that food did not
just appear on my plate,” he
said. “I know it came from
a worker’s hands.”
After hearing from farm-
worker
representatives,
Walsh said he planned to
look into several problems
discussed at the roundtable,
such as changing coronavi-
rus restrictions and grow-
ing safety threats from heat
and wildfi re smoke.
“The last 18 months
have been completely dev-
astating,” he said.
The lack of higher over-
time wages and the power-
ful role of labor contractors
are also unique to the farm
industry, he said.
“Rules that apply to the
40-hour worker don’t apply
to the farmworker,” Walsh
said.
There are currently
immigration
proposals
fl oating around Washing-
ton, D.C., that are specifi c
to “essential workers” and
people who arrived in the
U.S. as children, but Walsh
said he’d prefer more com-
prehensive legislation to be
introduced.
“I think we actually need
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