A6 The BulleTin • SaTurday, auguST 21, 2021
OSHA
Continued from A5
PCUN recently conducted
surveys with 50 farmworkers in
the Willamette Valley to assess
how well they felt employers
were complying with the rules.
The vast majority, Lopez said,
indicated they were being pro-
vided with enough water and
shade during the extreme heat.
“Overall, people feel like
there are steps being taken to
follow the rules,” she said.
Since July 9, Oregon OSHA
has fielded 971 workplace
complaints from across the
state, according to the agency’s
records. Of those, 136 were
marked as “heat-related.”
A Capital Press review found
that, of the 136 heat-related
complaints, 18 complaints
were made against 12 differ-
ent farms and food processing
companies. Complaints ranged
from not providing access to
Pot farm
Continued from A5
“And then, they are trans-
ported up to the location.
From what we are under-
standing, these workers are
not paid until the end of the
year when the shipment goes
out and the money is brought
in. There’s not like a weekly
payroll going on here.”
Investigators are looking
Sierra Dawn McClain/Capital Press File
The new emergency rules adopted by Oregon OSHA are intended to protect workers.
water or breaks, to workers not
being trained to recognize the
into an operation that involves
more than 1,300 acres of prop-
erty and 200 workers. Due to
the size of the farm and the
scope of the investigation, the
Josephine County Sheriffs
department was joined by 16
other state and federal agen-
cies, including the Department
of Homeland Security and the
FBI.
These agencies seized ten
firearms and $140,000 in cash
Dutch Bros
Continued from A5
Dutch Bros, which had grown rapidly
by franchising its drive-thru coffee stands
in prior years, has moved over the past
four years to expand through compa-
ny-owned outlets. Dutch Bros reported
Friday that it no longer franchises at all,
and nearly half its stores are now compa-
ny-owned. And the company indicated it
believes it could grow to as many as 4,000
locations.
In its filing, Dutch Bros said it sees a
big opportunity among coffee drinkers
who want their beverages on the go. But
it warned its “substantial debt” — and
more debt it may take on in the future to
support its expansion — poses a risk to
the business if it runs into trouble with its
ambitious growth plans.
And the filing hints at some of the
growing pains Dutch Bros will face as it
moves to the public markets.
The company reported in Friday’s fil-
ing that audits of its financial statements
for the past two years found “a material
weakness” in its internal accounting, be-
cause it lacked “personnel capable of ap-
propriately accounting for complex trans-
actions we undertake.”
Dutch Bros said it hired more accoun-
tants this year, but warned that a weak-
Insurance
Continued from A5
While it was also the right
thing to do for the climate, the
decision to ask for divestment
and disclosure was based on
the financial risk facing these
investments, he said.
Jones’ office monitored in-
surers’ reserve portfolios, ap-
plied different climate-risk
scenarios and performed stress
tests to examine how certain
investments might perform un-
der various future greenhouse
gas emission policies, he said.
Regulators in the U.S. don’t
generally scrutinize insurers’
reserve portfolios for climate
risk, but those practices are
more common in other coun-
tries, he said.
“Those climate risk regula-
tory practices are the standard
among financial regulators in
Europe and Asia,” he said. “By
and large, both the U.S. insur-
ance industry and state insur-
ance regulators are behind the
curve.”
Climate risk assessments are
something that more compa-
nies and regulators in the U.S.
“ought to be doing,” Jones said.
IPCC’s sixth climate change
assessment was published on
Aug. 9, and its conclusions
were stark. UN Secretary-Gen-
eral António Guterres called
the report’s findings a “code
red for humanity.”
“The alarm bells are deafen-
ing, and the evidence is irrefut-
able: greenhouse-gas emissions
from fossil-fuel burning and
deforestation are choking our
planet and putting billions of
people at immediate risk,” Gu-
terres added. “Global heating is
affecting every region on Earth,
signs of heat-related illnesses.
Each of those complaints are
this week. In addition, offi-
cials destroyed 72,283 can-
nabis plants along with 6,000
pounds of processed cannabis
and 373 greenhouses.
More than 250 law en-
forcement officers entered
the property on Tuesday, they
found the workers living in
squalid conditions, sleeping
on cardboard mats or in tents.
Although the workers denied
that they had been trafficked,
nesses in its internal controls continued
through the end of 2020 because the
company has a “limited number” of em-
ployees with adequate expertise.
No Oregon company has raised $100
million in an IPO since 2004. Founded
with a single pushcart in 1992 in Grants
Pass by brothers Dane and Travis
Boersma, Dutch Bros is now positioned
to be one of Oregon’s largest businesses.
In a state known for fancy coffees,
Dutch Bros has gone the opposite direc-
tion by offering a range of mass-market
drinks, from simple drip coffee to energy
drinks and frothy coffee shakes.
Dutch Bros (it’s pronounced “bros,” not
“brothers”) has built an avid following
with a reputation for friendly, outgoing
“broistas” who rush from the coffee kiosk
to greet people waiting in line at its drive-
thrus.
“The most important thing for us was
building customer loyalty. If we could
figure that out, we were winning,” Tra-
vis Boersma, now Dutch Bros’ chairman,
wrote in a letter to prospective investors
included in Friday’s filing.
“So when people would come back day
after day, we rolled out the red carpet.
Our broistas would have fun trying to
make everyone smile and create a mag-
netic, contagious experience,” Boersma
wrote. “That lives on in our company. It’s
with many of the changes be-
coming irreversible.”
Granville Martin, director
of U.S. policy and outreach at
Value Reporting Foundation,
said the specter of rising pay-
outs from environmental ca-
tastrophes demonstrates the
need more robust climate dis-
closure.
“It’s unsustainable,” Martin
said, noting that California’s
property and casualty industry
paid out more than $26 bil-
lion in claims in 2017-18. Since
then, officials have been ex-
panding fire risk maps and the
amount of destruction caused
by wildfire appears to be wors-
“in progress,” according to Or-
egon OSHA.
Daniel, the sheriff, suggested
that this could be because they
were scared to talk.
The Department of Home-
land Security offered victim
services to the workers, but
they all turned the services
down. This could be for var-
ious reasons, including fear
of their employers and fear of
immigration authorities.
No arrests have been made
since the raid.
CENTRAL OREGON
SCHOOL DIRECTORY
• Handy, easy to use school reference guide.
• One stop reference to all of the schools in Central Oregon.
In The Bulletin This Sunday!
giving them very little time to
accomplish what is mandated
in each of these rules.”
For example, Dresler said
farms in Southern Oregon
were struggling to find N95
masks on short notice as the
AQI rose above 200 because of
nearby wildfires.
“I was just getting endless
calls saying they couldn’t find
these masks,” she said. “People
just panicked.”
Lesley Tamura, who grows
42 acres of pears at her family’s
orchard near Hood River, Ore.,
said the rules are also costing
money, such as buying window
air conditioners for workers
living in on-farm housing.
“Because the rules are con-
stantly changing ... it’s defi-
nitely difficult to keep up,
and it’s definitely a financial
burden,” Tamura said. “At the
same time, we have to figure
out what we can realistically do
to protect (workers).”
Labor
The number of union mem-
bers has long been in decline.
Private-sector union member-
ship hit a new low of 6.2% in
2019. Yet, labor remains a pow-
erful force in Washington, D.C.
It has a vocal ally in the White
House in Joe Biden.
Shuler said she will continue
to work to get an infrastructure
bill passed. Some economists
have estimated the legislation
could create 650,000 jobs.
Beyond that, Shuler said the
union needs to “look inward”
and determine how to make
unions relevant to more Amer-
icans. The AFL-CIO needs to
show that “the labor move-
ment is the path to a good, sus-
tainable job.”
Shuler had served as AFL-
CIO secretary-treasurer since
2009.
The AFL-CIO also elected
Fred Redmond, international
vice president of the United
Steelworkers, to replace Shuler
as secretary-treasurer. Red-
mond is the first African
American to hold the No. 2
job.
Shuler is generally seen as a
shrewd politician and talented
team-builder. Last winter, Red-
mond lauded Shuler for tack-
ling the deep divisions within
the 56 unions that belong to
the AFL-CIO.
“Liz is tenacious; she has an
ability to pull people together,”
he said. “Look, we have a lot
of work to do in our union
and throughout all of labor.
But there ain’t no one else try-
ing to tackle this, getting the
Black workers, the beat cops,
the prison guards to the same
table.”
Shuler, 51, grew up in a
wooded corner of Milwaukie
that still feels far removed
from the city. Both her parents
worked for Portland General
Electric. Her father, Lance, was
a lineman for the utility and a
proud union member.
She graduated from the
University of Oregon with a
journalism degree. But her
dreams of a broadcasting ca-
reer never materialized, and
she got a job with the Interna-
tional Brotherhood of Electri-
cal Workers in Oregon. The
job became a calling when her
father saw his retirement nest
egg decimated after Texas en-
ergy giant Enron took over the
local utility.
She was 34 when she was
tapped to be chief of staff
for IBEW President Ed Hill,
a move that brought her to
Washington, D.C.
Many viewed Shuler as
the heavy favorite to replace
Trumka, who was 72 and had
announced his intention to
retire. The other union leader
considered a potential rival to
Shuler was Sara Nelson, the
high-profile head of the Asso-
ciation of Flight Attendants.
Another Oregonian, Nelson
grew up in Corvallis.
It’s unclear whether Nelson
wanted the job. Shuler was the
only candidate for president on
the ballot Friday.
Shuler and Redmond’s terms
will last just until June 2022.
At that point, AFL-CIO dele-
gates will gather at the group’s
convention in Philadelphia and
elect leaders to full four-year
terms.
holder engagement and activ-
ism defense for the firm.
“There’s a tension between
long-term and short-term
investors on the relative im-
portance of environmental
factors,” Bieber said in an in-
terview.
Institutional investors are
more concerned with compa-
nies’ long-term financial risks,
including sustainability factors,
she said. On the other hand,
short-term investors are less
willing to consider longer time
horizons and would prefer im-
mediate financial returns over
significant long-term invest-
ment.
“I don’t think one can any
longer deny this is occurring;
the question is will we act
quickly and strongly enough to
reduce the impacts of climate
change which we’re already
seeing all around us,” said
Jones, the former California in-
surance commissioner.
Continued from A5
our culture, what we look for in our em-
ployees and our differentiator.”
Dane Boersma died in 2009 of amy-
otrophic lateral sclerosis, Lou Gehrig’s
disease.
The chain has 471 stores across the
West, with the greatest number in Ore-
gon and locations as far east as Texas and
Oklahoma. Three years ago, when it took
an investment from a private equity firm
called TSG Consumer Partners, the cof-
fee chain said it hoped to have 800 loca-
tions altogether by 2023.
Notably, Friday’s filing did not disclose
how much of the business TSG owns,
nor how much Travis Boersma and other
family members own. Those details will
become public if Dutch Bros proceeds
with in its offering.
No new, large businesses have emerged
in Oregon for several decades. But the re-
gion now has a handful of big companies
emerging, some in Oregon and others
just across the Columbia River in Van-
couver.
Vancouver marketing data broker
ZoomInfo, for example, held its IPO last
year and now has a market value of nearly
$24 billion. And Portland vacation rental
powerhouse Vacasa plans to go public
this fall by merging with a publicly traded
investment fund in a deal that values that
business at $4.5 billion.
ening, he added.
Affordable and reliable in-
surance is essential to manag-
ing risk and touches on every
sector of the economy, Martin
said.
Martin’s Value Reporting
Foundation formed in June in
a merger of the International
Integrated Reporting Coun-
cil and the Sustainability Ac-
counting Standards Board. The
group develops international
standards for ESG disclosure.
Martin says companies in
vulnerable sectors, including
insurance, are more attuned to
environmental risks, but there
still aren’t adequate methods
The PCUN survey found
that most workers, however,
were not aware of the new
rules and had not been trained
by their employer. “That part
seemed to be lacking a lot,” Lo-
pez said.
Another gap, Lopez said, is
whether workers are willing
to take safety breaks. While
hourly workers said they had
no problem with rest periods,
piece rate workers paid based
on how much they harvest
were less willing.
“Every minute they weren’t
out there, it meant money lost,”
she said.
Jenny Dresler, a lobbyist for
the Oregon Farm Bureau, said
the biggest challenge for farms
boils down to timing.
“Particularly family farms
and ranches, what I’m hearing
is just a sense of being over-
whelmed and overloaded,” she
said. “We are asking the world
of these small employers, and
for tracking this information.
“We need standards so in-
vestors can understand the
prospects of particular com-
panies but also so they can
understand the sector-wide
implications of climate risk,”
Martin said.
Elizabeth Bieber, an attor-
ney at Freshfields Bruckhaus
Deringer LLP in New York, said
an investor’s attention to climate
risk often depends on their time
horizon. Bieber is head of share-
OBITUARY
Linda Lee Pernell
December 07, 1942 - July 17, 2021
On Saturday, July 17th, Linda Lee
Pernell lost her 12-year batt le with
cancer in her home in Bend, OR at
the age of 78. Born 12/07/42 to
Howard and Pauline Pernell, her dog
Wimpy was her closest companion
and inspired a lifelong advocacy for
animals. She enjoyed high school,
Tomahawk Ski Bowl, and waterskiing
at Lake of the Woods. In 1961,
she married James Kenneth Hall,
became a loving mother and raised
3 children in Eugene. She remodeled
homes in Eugene, Austi n, TX, and Bend with the impeccable taste and att enti on
to detail she was known for in everything. In Austi n, her love of houses made
her an excepti onal real estate agent. Tragically, her son Greg Hall passed, but
she is survived by daughters Karina Mayorga & Kristi na Hall, and grandchildren
Giovanna & Steven Mayorga. She is missed as mother, grandmother, friend, and
neighbor. Linda’s ashes and animal companion’s will be interred next to her son
in the historic Masonic Cemetery in Eugene. Gift s can be made to Defenders of
Wildlife, PETA, or the Humane Society.