FEBRUARY 04, 2022, KEIZERTIMES, PAGE A14
Can Biden stand up to Putin?
PUBLIC SQUARE welcomes all points of view. Published submissions do not necessarily reflect the views of the Keizertimes
Treat farmworkers fairly
when it comes to overtime
guest
OPINION
By RAMIRO NAVARRO
During the wildfires, while daytime
skies were dark in Willamette Valley,
farm workers showed up to work. In the
heatwaves, farm workers endured haz-
ardous conditions while literally dying
from heat exposure. Throughout this
pandemic, farm workers show up to
ensure we have fresh food while fight-
ing for access to basic protective equip-
ment. I can empathize as someone who
comes from a farm working family. But
these farm workers need more than just
empathy. They need our elected leaders
to step up.
This session the legislature will deter-
mine if farm workers should be treated
fairly, like you and me. By that I mean
their ability to qualify for overtime. Some
argue that “farm owners will pay too much,
or “the harvest will spoil." These points
sound good—but let me explain why
those arguments have no merit.
As a 25-year-old farm worker, I
reported to the field at 6 a.m. everyday
to work a 12-hour shift. After my fifth day
towing a two-story harvester with peo-
ple sorting garlic seed, my replacement
didn’t show. My orders next were to work
their shift. I should have declined but I
put myself and others in danger because
I needed the money, and my employer
was willing to exploit that need instead of
focus on the safety of the workers. After
several more hours, I had to shut down
the harvester before my eyelids did. This
upset the sorters who had only worked a
nine-hour shift. I clocked 69 hours in five
days without overtime in hazardous con-
ditions because laws did not protect me
or the sorters from the abuse.
Four months later: Same 12-hour
shifts, seven days a week. Only this time
the harvest was Christmas trees. Gravel
lots lined with lamps pointing up into
semi-trucks in the same way that some
UPS and FedEx lots are setup, only
these packages are Noble firs instead of
Amazon packages. While UPS, FedEx
and Amazon are required to pay overtime
which helps their schedule, farm owners
are not. This crop doesn’t spoil though. It
actually gains value as it grows if not har-
vested. There’s also about as much nutri-
tional value in a Christmas tree as there
is in an Amazon box but only one worker
delivering their product is eligible for fair
wages. So farmworkers are taken advan-
tage of, season after season, in hazardous
conditions because there’s very little pro-
tecting them from the abuse that has run
rampant.
I support farmworker overtime
because we need to move past prejudiced
practices of ancient times. Washington
State has. California has. So when nurs-
eries complain “it’s hard to find workers,"
explain to them that’s probably because
they fled to our neighbors in the north
and south who pay better. If the argu-
ment is “farm owners will have to auto-
mate," I say let them. That means more
workers for the thousands of Oregon jobs
which are severely understaffed. We talk
about paying people what their worth, so
why not farm workers. Farm workers are
people, too.
(Ramiro Navarro lives in Keizer,
where he is a business owner.)
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By MARC A. THIESSEN
Here’s a question: If President Joe
Biden can’t stand up to Germany, how can
he stand up to Russian President Vladimir
Putin over Ukraine?
Most of the NATO alliance is united in
taking a tough stand to support Ukraine
and deter and punish Russia if it invades.
The skunk at the garden party is Berlin.
While other NATO allies provide Ukraine
with weapons, Germany is blocking
Estonia from sending military aid to Kyiv,
refusing to provide permits for the transfer
of German-origin weapons to the besieged
democracy.
Germany is also resisting efforts to spec-
ify tough sanctions the allies would impose
if Putin does in fact invade. The reason?
Sanctions that actually hurt Putin would
have to target Russia’s two most significant
exports: oil and natural gas. But Germany
is the world’s biggest buyer of Russian gas.
For decades Berlin has been turning itself
into Moscow’s energy vassal—phasing out
coal and nuclear power, while increasing its
dependence on Russian imports. Germany
now gets more than half of its gas imports
from Russia (compared with about 40% on
average for the rest of the European Union).
Worse still, Germany has insisted
on proceeding with the Nord Stream 2
natural gas pipeline with Russia. Nord
Stream 2 represents an existential threat
to Ukraine, because it will allow Putin to
cut off natural gas exports to Kyiv with-
out cutting off Western Europe. It will also
double Germany’s capacity for Russian gas
imports—increasing its dependence on
Russian energy. Biden waived U.S. sanc-
tions imposed by the Trump administra-
tion, greenlighting the project to appease
Berlin. Now Germany won’t even commit
to shutting down the pipeline if Russia
invades, with the German defense minis-
ter declaring, “We should not drag [Nord
Stream 2] into this conflict.”
The other sanctions that would hurt
Moscow involve blacklisting major Russian
banks, and kicking Moscow out of the
SWIFT network used by almost all major
financial institutions to wire money—which
would effectively exclude Russia from the
global economy. But once again, Germany,
is opposed, and as a result, Reuters reports
that “Western governments are no longer
considering cutting Russian banks off from
the Swift global payments system.”
If Biden wants to prevent a Russian
invasion, he needs to stop letting Germany
dictate the U.S. response and start project-
ing strength. He does not need Germany’s
permission to act.
First, he should immediately reimpose
the sanctions he lifted on Nord Stream
2. He should tell Berlin that Russia has
already demonstrated that it cannot be
allowed to hold Ukraine’s energy sup-
plies hostage—and that he will not allow
other
VOICES
Germany to increase Europe’s dependence
on Russian energy.
Second, he should outline the specific,
crippling sanctions the United States will
impose on Russian energy exports if Putin
invades, and publicly name the Russian
banks the United States will sanction. He
can do this without giving Berlin a veto.
Third, he should take the Polish gov-
ernment up on the offer they made when
Donald Trump was in office to move U.S.
troops from Stuttgart, Germany, to a new
permanent U.S. military base in Poland.
Why should Germany—which, despite
being the wealthiest country in Europe,
spends only 1.4% of its gross domestic prod-
uct on defense—continue to be rewarded
with the economic benefit of U.S. bases?
Biden is deploying 5,000 U.S. troops
to Eastern Europe and the Baltic states.
This sounds like strength, but in fact it is
the opposite. The proposed deployment
appears to be little more than a bargaining
chip with Moscow. NBC News reports that
Biden might propose scaling back existing
U.S. troop deployments and military exer-
cises in Poland and the Baltics in exchange
for Russia scaling back its forces on the
border with Ukraine—throwing our NATO
allies under the bus to appease Putin.
Putin’s aggression should not be rewarded
with any concessions on where NATO
forces are deployed. Instead, Biden should
make clear that if Putin invades, he will
move all 35,000 U.S. troops out of Germany
and station them in permanently Poland
and the Baltics.
Putin thinks Biden is bluffing when he
threatens serious consequences. He knows
that in 2014, when he last invaded Ukraine
and annexed Crimea, the Obama-Biden
administration shied away from energy
and banking sanctions that would have
hit Moscow in a significant way. The pal-
try sanctions they did impose temporarily
cost Russia about 1 percent of GDP—a price
Putin was willing to pay for Crimea. He’s
betting that the Western allies will not do
much more today. He knows that Germany
will seek to weaken any Western response,
because he has hooked Berlin on Russian
energy.
This is why Biden needs to stand up to
both Berlin and Moscow. If he fails to do
so, this could be the end of the Atlantic alli-
ance. The purpose of NATO was to deter
Russian aggression. If allies can’t agree to
take steps necessary to do that, then it’s fair
to ask: Why does NATO exist? And it will
be Biden—and Berlin—that killed it.
(Washington Post)
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