Antonio Gómora Arias knows farm work isn't easy.
When he came to the U.S. from Mexico in 1983, he was in his 30s and landed a job picking strawberries near Corvallis — a job he learned quickly was punishing on the back and knees.
Picking garlic and onions was still too much strain on the back, so he tried his hand at fish bait, which paid $15 per bucket of 1,000 worms.
Eventually, he found a job more suitable to his height at the Holiday Trees Farm in Corvallis, cutting and planting pines. He'd work Monday through Saturday, but sometimes the whole week during a time-crunch, when he had to load trailers with freshly cut Christmas trees.
The work didn't offer much in the way of benefits — no holidays, sick leave or vacation — but he did get overtime.
Gómora Arias, now 76 and living at an affordable housing complex for farmworkers in Lebanon, knows many Oregon farms historically don't offer that benefit, which is why he's intrigued to see how a new state law, one that mandates farms pay overtime, impacts workers.
Many people will be affected, he said through a translator.
Though exactly how farmworkers will be affected in the mid-Willamette Valley remains to be seen, as the law makes its way through its first year on the books.
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