HB 2358 Overtime for Agricultural Workers

This bill eliminates the agricultural exemption for payment of overtime to agricultural workers and requires overtime pay in excess of 40 hours per workweek.

Personal Choice and Responsibility
This bill will impact everyone raising food cost or cause a scarcity of food but not getting the harvest in before it rots.

Fiscal Responsibility
It stacks costs onto a volatile commodity that owner can’t afford to survive. Migrant workers here on the H2A visa program are required to be paid based on Federal H2A rates, and in Oregon that is $16.34 and Oregon’s minimum wage is $12-12.75. The rate is set to ensure that a US citizen ag worker is not displaced by a guest worker.

Limited Government
Oregon’s statutory laws provide limits on the number of hours in a workweek and prescribes overtime pay for workers employed in canneries, driers, and packing plants. For such workers, ORS 653.265 requires overtime pay of one and one-half if the worker works more than 10 hours in a day or 40 hours in a week. Overtime is to be calculated on a daily basis and a weekly basis, and the worker is to be paid the higher of the two amounts.

Free Markets
Consumers set the prices for agricultural crops and consumers will simply buy imported produce and ag commodities from other states or countries. Growers use fewer chemicals in their farming practices and have gone to great lengths to reduce the use of fossil fuel vehicles, they will have no other choice than to abandon some of those practices to account for the increased labor costs. This is a message to legislature to quit stacking costs onto the agriculture industry.