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Friday, January 7, 2022
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the opinions of the authors but
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Opinion
Editor & Publisher
Managing Editor
Joe Beach
Carl Sampson
opinions@capitalpress.com | CapitalPress.com/opinion
Our View
Overtime mandates ignore economic realities
hen the Oregon Legisla-
ture meets next month,
the question of ending the
overtime exemption for farmworkers
will again be on the agenda.
In a perfect world, it would be diffi-
cult to argue that the hours worked in
the field shouldn’t be treated the same
as those worked in the factory. But the
imperfect truth is that differences exist
and mandating farmworker overtime
after 40 hours will inevitably lead to
fewer farmworkers.
The Fair Labor Standards Act,
passed by Congress in 1938, estab-
lished a federal minimum wage and
provided for overtime pay for work
over 40 hours. The act also provided
19 job classifications, including farm-
workers, that are exempt from the
overtime rule.
W
Mateusz Perkowski/Capital Press File
Workers load Christmas trees onto a
truck. The Oregon Legislature is taking
up whether farm workers should be
paid overtime.
Critics now argue that the exemp-
tion was the product of racism and pan-
dering to the needs of special interests
— big, “corporate” farming concerns.
Farmers of all sizes note that farm
work is distinct from factory produc-
tion. The nature of most farm work
makes it difficult to schedule in eight-
hour days and 40-hour work weeks.
There’s no doubt that the world is a
different place than it was in 1938. The
state has raised the minimum wage
and has mandated a host of protections
for farmworkers. To many, an end to
the overtime exemption seems like the
next step.
But one aspect of agricultural eco-
nomics has not changed since 1938.
Most farmers are still price takers, not
price makers. Outside of the few who
sell directly to consumers, they cannot
simply pass along higher labor costs
the way retailers and manufacturers,
though limited by the impacts of com-
petition, can.
This is a frustrating reality that farm-
ers struggle to make those outside of
agriculture understand.
Many who perform farm labor
understand the economics better than
Biden trade strategy
must unlock new
access for U.S. dairy
Our View
G
Port of Los Angeles
Container ships a quarter-mile long clog some ports and are too big for other ports to handle.
Shipping industry needs
to rethink its strategy
t’s no secret that trans-Pacific shippers face
steep obstacles these days.
Problems range from a limited number of
available containers to oversized vessels that have
created chokepoints along the West Coast.
This is a statement of the obvious, but if port
operators, shippers and ship owners had been
on the ball in the past we wouldn’t be mired in
today’s traffic jam. This isn’t so much about the
impacts of the COVID pandemic as it is a lack of
planning.
A handful of major ports are plugged with
huge ships, many of which are three times larger
than the ports were originally designed to handle.
In Los Angeles and Long Beach, Calif., which
handle 40% of all containers entering the U.S.,
as many as 100 ships were anchored offshore at
any given time last fall. Some waited nearly two
months to be unloaded.
Before the pandemic, that backlog averaged 17
ships — still a major problem.
A key problem is the size of the ships. There’s
a big difference between an older ship that carried
7,000 containers and one that carries more than
21,000 containers and is a quarter-mile long. The
channels are not deep enough — the Port of Port-
land, for example, can’t handle the largest ships
— and other ports require massive dredging proj-
ects that cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
That alone has put a huge burden on port facil-
ities. Add the fact that truck chassis are in short
supply and warehouses are full, and you have a
monumental snarl.
It has also made obtaining and loading contain-
ers for the westbound trip to Asian markets dif-
ficult. Too often containers return to China and
other destinations empty. This leaves many agri-
cultural shippers scrambling to find containers
I
and book them on a ship.
The problem is akin to that facing the airline
industry a few years ago. Airlines had bought
massive planes that could carry between 500 and
800 passengers at a time. They flew them only to
major hub airports, where passengers had to catch
other flights to their final destinations.
What they found was they were swamping the
hub airports and forcing passengers to take two or
three flights to reach their destinations.
Once airline managers figured out that flying
more but smaller planes directly to destinations
was cheaper and more efficient, many switched
away from relying solely on jumbo jets for long-
haul flights.
Airports were less crowded and passengers
reached their destinations quicker.
In container shipping, the 10 largest compa-
nies handle 80% of the traffic. They need to fig-
ure out that they are swamping ports with their
massive ships. When they supplement their fleets
with smaller, more efficient ships that can call at
smaller ports, bottlenecks at the large ports will
ease.
Ports such as Portland, Coos Bay and others
along the West Coast will be able to accommo-
date a significant number of ships.
But that will take time.
What’s needed is for port managers, shippers,
vessel owners, truckers and longshore workers to
sit down and discuss how to get past the current
bottleneck at West Coast ports.
Then they need to discuss what they can do to
prevent ports from getting swamped in the future.
Once they do that, they will quickly discover
they are all on the same boat. And that boat will
be smaller.
READERS’ VIEW
We need more
dams, not fewer
Common sense isn’t so common
these days. I read all of the opinions
on dam removal and the great cost
it would impose on the taxpayer.
Now consider the talk about cli-
mate change, mega-droughts and
dooms day all of the time.
Seems to me we should be
building more dams and water
storage to capture and save all the
the legislators and advocates who are
pressing the case for overtime. They
know that farmers facing tight margins
will cut the workforce or move to less
labor-intensive field crops that can be
tended and harvested by machine.
They also know that innovators are
busy designing machines that can do
intricate and delicate work such as
picking fruit and pruning trees. Higher
labor costs hasten that effort.
We think everyone performing farm
work should be paid as much as busi-
ness conditions allow. But we know
that mandating overtime won’t change
the basic economics.
Someone will eventually profit from
an end to the overtime exemption for
agriculture, but in the long run it won’t
be farmworkers. Our bet is on the engi-
neers and machinery manufacturers.
water we can during good snow-
pack years.
I think the real endangered spe-
cies in this country is a man trying
to make a living.
Randy Burns
Vale, Ore.
REEN BAY, Wis.
— In early Octo-
ber, we finally got
a glimpse into the Biden
administration’s approach
to trade when USTR
Ambassador Katherine Tai
outlined a “New Approach
to the U.S.-China Trade
Relationship.”
Tai made clear the
intention to maintain sev-
eral policies from the pre-
vious administration,
including keeping hold of
tariffs and zeroing in on
enforcement. The stated
difference in the new
approach is to simultane-
ously build out more col-
laborative efforts with our
allies.
This all sounded fine.
But when pressed on
whether the U.S. will
move toward engaging
in comprehensive trade
negotiations, whether
through a China Phase 2
agreement or with other
partners, disappointingly
there was no firm com-
mitment. This has been
reiterated time and again
through the administra-
tion’s actions with trading
partners over the past sev-
eral months.
Most recently, the
administration has been
engaging with partners
throughout the Indo-Pacific
region, structuring what
has been touted as an “eco-
nomic framework.” While
that might appear to be an
approach to re-engage with
our former Trans-Pacific
Partnership partners, it has
been made clear that the
end goal is not a trade deal.
This is disheartening, to
say the least, for the U.S.
dairy industry and farm-
ers like me who are hop-
ing for sustainable farm
businesses that survive and
thrive long-term for our
families. Engagement in
the global market has long
been recognized as key
for the health and vitality
of our industry and rural
communities.
According to the U.S.
Department of Agriculture,
each dollar of exports stim-
ulates $1.14 in economic
activity. In 2020, Wiscon-
sin alone exported more
than $490 million worth of
dairy products, contribut-
ing another $560 million
in economic activity across
the U.S.
But this isn’t just about
dollars and cents. Good,
comprehensive trade deals
make markets fairer and
more competitive. For U.S.
dairy, this means ensur-
ing that our partners don’t
put in place restrictive bar-
riers that reduce compe-
tition and aren’t based on
science.
GUEST
VIEW
Brody
Stapel
Ambassador Tai has
also said that part of the
administration’s new
approach to trade would
not be in the traditional
sense, that is, not neces-
sarily focused on market
access.
In the dairy industry,
we understand fully the
importance of taking new
approaches; our product
innovation has been a suc-
cess story, particularly in
the global marketplace.
But at the same time, the
U.S. should not overlook
what is currently working
and consider how we can
maintain momentum.
Greater market access
for dairy exports means
more to the industry now
than ever. Exports are
essential for balance of
the U.S. milk supply and
demand, growth of the
industry and, at the end of
the day, dairy farmers’ milk
checks. The expanding
global demand for dairy
products, notably across
Asia, makes an exports
push even more opportune.
While we understand
the administration’s focus
remains on the domes-
tic industry as we emerge
from the pandemic — stat-
ing that the key to our
global competitiveness
begins at home — we must
also recognize that new
trade agreements can sup-
port those efforts. When
done right, such agree-
ments not only help open
new markets for U.S.
products, but they also
create a business-friendly
environment that attracts
greater investment, fosters
innovation and stimulates
economic growth.
So as the Biden admin-
istration continues to
engage in economic dia-
logue with our part-
ners, it is the hope of our
dairy farmers and proces-
sors — for the sake of the
industry and rural Amer-
ica — that the administra-
tion embraces the value of
expanding market access
and finally begins real,
good-faith negotiations.
Brody Stapel is a dairy
farmer in Wisconsin and
president of Edge Dairy
Farmer Cooperative,
which represents farm-
ers throughout the Upper
Midwest on federal dairy
policy and is one of the
top dairy co-ops in the
country based on milk
volume.