Willamette Valley Vineyards, one of the largest wineries in the state, will begin paying overtime to its farmworkers in January, pointing to rising inflation and the rising cost of living.
The announcement comes as PCUN, Oregon’s farmworker union, plans to re-introduce a farmworker overtime bill in the 2022 legislative session, and as a group of farmworkers brings a lawsuit claiming the state is illegally excluding them from overtime pay.
“It starts first with your values, and I know my colleagues who farm have those same values. They just have to figure out how to get from where we are to where we need to be without costing workers their jobs and farmers their farm," Willamette Valley Vineyards founder and CEO Jim Bernau said.
An exemption for agriculture in the federal Fair Labor Standards Act allows farmers to not pay agricultural workers time-and-a-half for hours they work past 40 hours a week. Six states, including California and Washington, have their own overtime laws that require paying some form of overtime to agricultural workers.
Farmworkers are some of the lowest-paid workers in the U.S. Their average yearly earnings are between $20,000 and $24,999, according to the National Agricultural Workers Survey. Agricultural workers are also mostly — 77% — Hispanic, according to the same survey.
The annual U.S. inflation rate reached 6.2% in October, the highest in more than three decades, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, according to the Pew Research Center.
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