SALEM, Ore. — After an often bitter debate, the Oregon House on Tuesday passed a phased-in 40-hour-week farmworker overtime bill that includes tax credits to help employers adjust to the requirement.
With less than a week remaining in the 2022 short session, House Bill 4002 advanced to the Senate on 37-23 party-line vote.
Democrats said the bill was a matter of equity for workers exempted from federal overtime requirements by a 1938 law. Republicans said it would spell ruin for family farms in Oregon and cast it as another example of urban lawmakers neither understanding nor carrying about rural concerns.
The bill requires time-and-a-half pay for agricultural work over 55 hours a week beginning in 2023. The overtime threshold ratchets down to 48 hours in 2025, then 40 hours in 2027.
“It may not be perfect, but it is a product of compromise,” said Rep. Paul Holvey, the Eugene Democrat who was in the middle of negotiations over the bill for more than a year. He noted concessions in extending the phase-in from three years to five, in offering refundable tax credits, and in requiring a report in late 2026 on the economic impact of the requirement.
Holvey and several others who advocated for the bill noted that the average life expectancy of a farmworker is 49 years.
Republicans, many representing farming areas or farmers themselves, fiercely fought the bill. Several said workers could well end up earning less money as farmers operating on tight margins adjust, shrink or mechanize their operations to avoid paying overtime.
Read the full story at the Portland Business Journal.
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