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East Oregonian
Tuesday, March 30, 2021
Data: Bill explicitly
targets aggregate data
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Ben Lonergan/East Oregonian
Cars navigate a COVID-19 mass vaccination site at the Sage Center in Boardman on Wednesday, March 24, 2021.
Vaccine: Farmworkers at greater infection risk
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to come get a vaccine.”
It’s a workforce that
drives the region’s economy,
but is widely known to place
workers, many of whom
are Hispanic and Latino, at
increased risk of infection.
In Mor row County,
Hispanic residents have
accounted for 57% of the
county’s total COVID-19
cases, according to data
provided by county health
officials earlier this month.
About 38% of Morrow
County’s population is
Hispanic, according to 2019
U.S. Census data.
Similar trends have
been reported in Umatilla
County, where residents
reporting Hispanic ethnic-
ity accounted for 41% of the
county’s total COVID-19
cases in 2020, according to
data from the county health
department. The population
also tested positive at a rate
over three times higher than
non-Hispanics, the data
shows.
Saito said the event
was a collaborative effort
between a number of groups
to immunize a community
they recognize as a “priority
population.”
“We k now t hey’re
exposed because they have
to be close together when
they work, and there’s been
a lot of racism and injustice
that’s happened over time,”
Saito said, adding that the
“ending health inequities”
is part of the state’s 10-year
plan. “This is one of the
ways we’re making sure we
have an equity focus and
that we’re looking at those
populations that have been
disproportionately infected
and who have historically
been underserved.”
Officials have said work-
ing conditions in essential
workplaces have been a
driving factor behind the
pandemic’s disproportion-
ate impact on Hispanic
communities nationwide.
“We have this whole
row of processing plants,
so (it’s) definitely a high-
risk community,” Rivera
said, looking out at the cars
moving swiftly through the
clinic, dwarfed by the large
industrial facilities in the
background.
Because of this, every-
thing down to the schedul-
ing of the daily clinics was
geared to accommodate
agricultural workers, partly
because they often cannot
take time off work to get a
shot, Rivera said. He added
that the health department
engaged in a variety of
efforts to inform residents
about the clinic, like adver-
tising it on local Spanish
radio stations.
Similar efforts are ongo-
ing in Umatilla County,
where county health offi-
cials have been reaching
out to agricultural facilities
to bring vaccines to workers
while they’re on the job.
Umatilla County officials
have said they also want to
hold similar efforts as the
Morrow County clinic,
particularly because the
state brings more doses with
them, which could help with
the county’s dismal vaccina-
tion rates, which remain the
lowest in Oregon, according
to state data.
Overtime:
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sion makes sense because
the work farmworkers do is
usually seasonal, with many
working long hours during
the harvest season and
going from farm-to-farm to
get in the most work possi-
ble before the need dries up
later in the year. Unlike in
other industries, agricul-
tural employers often pay to
house migrant farmworkers,
which comes at a significant
cost, even though the hous-
ing is rustic and cramped
compared to standard hous-
ing.
But the origins of the
overtime exclusion are also
steeped in the racism of the
Jim Crow era. In the 1930s,
Southern lawmakers agreed
to support the progressive
federal wage and labor legis-
lation only if agriculture
workers, at the time many
of whom were Black, were
exempt from the require-
ments.
“We can’t continue
to ignore this,” said Rep.
Andrea Salinas, D-Lake
Oswego, who is one of 11
Oregon Democrats spon-
soring the bill. “Looking
back at the history of the
Fair Labor Standards Act
and why agriculture was
exempt in the first place, it
really was a matter of race. It
was a racial injustice meant
to keep Black people a part
of slave labor. For me, this is
about trying to reckon with
that past and making sure
we are building a future
that’s more equitable.”
To this day, the majority
of states do not require that
farmworkers receive over-
time pay. But there has been
some momentum toward
changing that over the last
five years.
Wage would be based
on how much is
harvested
California became the
first state to require over-
time pay for farmworkers in
2016, but didn’t begin phas-
ing in the new rules until
last year. New York, Minne-
sota, Hawaii and Maryland
have joined California in
requiring overtime pay
for farmworkers in certain
situations. And in Novem-
ber 2020, the Washington
East Oregonian, File
River Point Farms workers plant onion seeds in a field near County Line Road on March 17,
2015, west of Hermiston. A House bill introduced in January would require employers to
pay farmworkers overtime if they work more than 40 hours in a week, the same rights that
most nonfarm workers in Oregon already enjoy.
Supreme Court ruled that
dairy workers were entitled
to overtime pay, a decision
expected to be applied to
the state’s entire agriculture
industry.
Oregon’s bill would
require that farmworkers
receive time-and-a-half pay
for hours they work beyond
40 hours a week, or receive
one and a half times their
regular price for any over-
time hours if they are paid
on a piece-rate basis, mean-
ing they earn a wage based
on how much they harvest.
Workers in food process-
ing facilities are already
afforded the right to over-
time pay.
Sen. Chuck Thomsen,
R-Hood River, who owns
a pear orchard, said the bill
would ultimately hurt not
only farmers, but the farm-
workers whom it’s intended
to help.
He said the workers
whom he houses for free at
his orchard work long hours
six days a week over several
weeks while the pears are
being harvested. They can
also go to other farms during
the season to maximize
their income at the busiest
time of the year. He said he
pays workers based on the
amount they harvest and that
some make upward of $300
per day during the harvest
season.
If the bill passes, he said
he will have to limit his
employees’ weekly hours.
That would reduce their
weekly earnings.
“People think this will
help, but it will actually hurt
employees,” Thomsen said.
“The bill isn’t good for the
employers or the employ-
ees.”
‘It’s not equitable, it’s
not fair’
A report commissioned
by the U.S. Department of
Labor found that the aver-
age farmworker was making
only between $17,500 and
$19,999 per year in 2016.
While many farmworkers
are required to receive at
least minimum wage, there
are some exceptions for
small farms. The minimum
wage has been increasing
slightly in Oregon each year
since 2016, with different
rates adopted for different
parts of the state.
Jenny Dresler, a lobbyist
for the Oregon Farm Bureau,
said those minimum wage
increases have already been
squeezing Oregon farmers
and that those employers
simply can’t afford to absorb
the added cost of paying
their workers overtime.
Approximately 91% of
544 agricultural employ-
ers surveyed by the farm
bureau said they would be
unable to afford the cost of
complying with an overtime
mandate without signifi-
cantly changing their oper-
ation. If Oregon lawmakers
vote to require overtime
pay, Dresler said farmers
may have to grow crops
that are less labor inten-
sive, replace workers with
machines when possible,
reduce their workforce, hire
new temporary workers so
they can limit the schedules
of their current employees to
40 hours per week, or even
leave Oregon.
Salinas said she is
sympathetic to the concerns
raised by farmers. She is in
the process of introducing
an amendment to the bill
that would allow Oregon’s
overtime requirements to
be phased in over three
years, with overtime pay
only being required in the
first year when employees
work more than 50 hours in
a week. She said additional
subsidies may be needed
to offset the costs for small
farms as well.
But she said the concerns
of farmers shouldn’t stop
lawmakers from taking
steps to right an injustice.
“We have 174,000 farm-
workers that should not be
excluded from the ability to
get overtime pay,” Salinas
said. “It’s not equitable, it’s
not fair.”
and in looking at SB 719, he
said, there seem to “lot of
caveats” to ensure that’s the
case.
Prior to a March 24 public
hearing, the committee
received testimony against
and for the bill.
Collette Young, adminis-
trator of the Oregon Health
Authority’s Center for Public
Health Practice, opposed
the bill in a March 15 letter.
Using an example of an
E. coli outbreak, epidemi-
ologists early on suspect
hummus had sickened several
people, she explained, but it
turned out all six also had
eaten spinach, a vehicle for
E. coli outbreaks.
“Had we been required
to release our statistical
compilations prematurely,
they would have incorrectly
impugned the hummus,” she
stated.
Also, she continued, “a
requirement to respond to
a public records request for
data in such situations would
derail the epidemiologist who
was collecting and analyzing
the data, slowing the inves-
tigation, and delaying the
outbreak solution.”
Young also argued that
releasing “aggregate” data
from numerically small
populations could lead to the
identification of individuals.
“Naming the reportable
disease causing a death in a
person of a specific age, such
as an infant in a small county,
would effectively tell what the
infant died of to those who
know of the death,” accord-
ing to Young. “Correlat-
ing relatively uncommon
demographic features with
diseases, even in aggregate,
can betray protected health
information.”
Young, however, did
not explain how someone’s
health information is private
once they are dead. Oregon
State Police, for example,
routinely identify victims of
fatal crashes.
The bill also received
plenty of support.
The Oregon Progressive
Party and Independent Party
of Oregon back the bill, tell-
ing the committee in a March
15 letter, “The Oregon Health
Authority has been refusing
to release key statistics used
to justify and monitor reopen-
ing of business in the COVID
pandemic,” including in mid
2020 when the state health
agency stopped releasing
public daily tallies of new
county hospitalizations.
Erin Kissane, co-founder
of The COVID Tracking Proj-
ect and a resident of Astoria,
submitted testimony support-
ing passage of the bill.
“A l t h o u g h O r e g o n
received an “A” grade in our
2020 state assessments, we
have noted several meaning-
ful deficits noted in the state’s
public COVID-19 data,”
Kissane stated, including
“problems with public test-
ing and case data, as well as
deficits in the state’s report-
ing on COVID-19 outbreaks,
cases and deaths in nursing
Repairs:
Continued from Page A1
said city staff recommended
widening Byers so moving
traffic on the two-way street
would have more room to
operate. But with Despain
only allowing parking on
one side of the street for the
length of the road, Patterson
said the city would widen
Despain to allow for on-street
parking on both sides of the
street.
While widening Despain
is in the realm of consider-
ation, Patterson said such a
project would come at the
discretion of the Pendleton
City Council. He added that
the city has usually directed
the public works department
to focus on asphalt projects
rather than widening roads,
and the city would continue
to focus on paving and
repairing roads unless told
otherwise.
One of the other factors
the city has to consider before
SENATE BILL 719
• Summary: SB 719
provides that certain
aggregate data relating
to reportable disease
investigations are not
confidential or exempt
from disclosure under
public records law unless
data could reasonably
lead to identification
of individual. Declares
emergency, effective on
passage
• The bill is in the Senate
Committee on Health
Care.
• Freshman Sen. Deb Pat-
terson, D-Salem, chairs
the committee, and Sen.
Tim Knopp, R-Bend, is the
vice chair. The commit-
tee plans to meet for a
work session Wednesday,
March 31, at 1 p.m. to dis-
cuss SB 719 and several
other bills.
• For more information,
go to olis.oregonlegis-
lature.gov/liz/2021R1/
Committees/SHC/2021-
03-31-13-00/Agenda.
homes and other long-term-
care facilities.” Lissane also
argued it is troubling the
Oregon Health Authority’s
refuses to provide the aggre-
gate data it uses to produce
visuals and arguments about
public health interventions
“Wit hout prov id i ng
access to the data behind
such claims,” she states, “the
OHA is asking members of
the public to take its state-
ments on trust — a trust it
has not consistently earned.”
In a recent example, Kiss-
ane referred to The Orego-
nian’s reporting on March 13.
The OHA touted that it
was allocating 15,000 first
doses per week for seniors
at the Portland metro area’s
three mass vaccination sites
— and this allocation would
increase vaccines available to
residents 65 and older in four
Oregon counties by “about
50%.” But when reporters
pressed, according to Kiss-
ane, “the OHA eventually
conceded that doses at these
facilities are not allocated
to specific groups of recipi-
ents, and that OHA therefore
didn’t know how many doses
had previously been given to
seniors, nor how many new
doses would be administered
to seniors.”
And The Oregonian
reporters found the true
week-over-week increase in
doses for these facilities was
only 19%. Kissane stated
Oregon residents deserve
access to the data behind
OHA’s claims.
“SB719 explicitly targets
the release of aggregate data
that can serve valid public
interests without compro-
mising the privacy of the indi-
viduals whose vaccinations,
illnesses, hospitalizations
and deaths are represented in
these data,” she concluded.
Tom Holt, a lobbyist for
the Society of Professional
Journalists, also submitted
testimony in favor of the bill.
moving forward with repairs
on Despain is whether it
needs to replace water and
sewer pipes while doing
street repairs.
With some underground
infrastructure hovering
around the century mark in
age, the city has tried to coor-
dinate utility projects with
street repair efforts to avoid
having to cut into the street
multiple times.
Patterson said North Main
Street is also on the city’s
radar for future repairs, but
it too has some complicating
factors. Extending northward
from the Main Street Bridge
up the slope of the North Hill,
North Main Street is riddled
with potholes and cracks in
the asphalt.
But the road is unusually
wide for a residential street
— it’s wide enough that the
street used to include a small
parking lot in the median.
Patterson said the city
staff would need to figure
out how to repair North Main
Street without driving up the
cost of paving the wide space.