Though many Oklahoma farmworkers are already paid more than double the minimum wage, there is concern how changes could create a ripple effect on an already tight industry.
Tommy Salisbury’s 3,800-acre wheat, corn, and cattle farm about 20 miles north of Tulsa, Oklahoma, relies on good weather, high commodity prices, and the state’s $7.25 an hour minimum wage.
His 39 employees receive different hourly rates, but if the minimum wage were more than doubled — which a group in Oklahoma is seeking to do — Salisbury said it would force him to increase the pay for all his employees and significantly shrink his profit margin.
Oklahoma also offers a minimum wage exemption for some agricultural jobs, which the group seeking a wage increase wants to end.
“Every wage law on which I have based my business model, decisions and growth are at risk of being taken away by individuals who do not understand how or why these exemptions are needed,” Salisbury wrote in an affidavit to the Oklahoma Supreme Court as part of a challenge to the minimum wage increase effort. “This could potentially cost me my life’s work and my source of income, as well as the income of my employees.”
Raise the Wage Oklahoma, a political organization seeking a statewide vote to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2029, along with removing current exemptions for employees working on farms, ranches and in feed stores, filed paperwork last year to begin collecting the 92,263 signatures needed to put the question on a statewide ballot.
But before the petition process could begin, the State Chamber of Oklahoma and Oklahoma Farm Bureau filed a legal challenge in November, asking the Oklahoma Supreme Court to declare the effort invalid.
The Oklahoma Farm Bureau’s opposition has spotlighted state farmworker wages, some of the lowest in the nation. It is also an example of how the bureau’s legal defense fund has grown to become a well-financed organization able to back legal challenges against policy efforts often opposed by the agriculture sector.
Agriculture leaders in the state say a higher minimum wage would be too costly for farming and ranching operations, igniting a negative ripple effect on the state’s rural economy. According to Forbes, Farm Product Raw Material Wholesalers was already the sixth least-profitable industry in the United States, while a separate category of Agriculture, Construction, and Mining was the 11th least-profitable industry.
Supporters of the increase argue farmworker wages have not kept pace with similar jobs in other fields and that low pay only benefits large corporations.
“We believe that folks who work hard should earn a living wage, including farmers and feed store workers. … These are the people who put food on the table,” said Amber England, a spokesperson for Raise the Wage Oklahoma.
Some farm and meat packing jobs pay well above minimum wage
If Raise the Wage Oklahoma’s ballot question were approved by voters, it would initially raise the state’s minimum wage to $9 an hour, with additional increases each year until reaching $15 an hour in 2029. After that, further increases would be based on the U.S. Department of Labor’s Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers, which supporters say would keep the minimum wage tied to inflation.
The petition would also remove the state’s minimum wage exemption for those working in feed stores and some positions on a ranch or farm.
While a state can’t have a lower minimum wage than the federal rate, the Fair Labor and Standards Act does provide some exemptions to farmworkers who are related to the farm owner, employees primarily engaged in the range production of livestock and certain types of harvest laborers, according to the National Agricultural Law Center.
According to U.S. News & World Report, Oklahoma has the eighth lowest cost of living nationally, and Oklahoma is one of 20 states that sets its minimum wage at the federal level of $7.25 per hour.
However, many Oklahoma farmworkers earn a much higher rate.
The average hourly pay for Oklahoma farmworkers tending to animals, including poultry and hog farms, is $15.20.
The average hourly pay for Oklahoma farmworkers and laborers working on a crop farm, including harvesting vegetables, is $15.16, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics for 2022.
But Daniel Costa, the director of immigration law and policy research at the Economic Policy Institute, said the hourly earnings of farmworkers are much lower than those in similar non-farm positions.
In 2022, the average farmworker in both crop and livestock sectors nationwide earned $16.62 per hour, well below the $27.56 hourly average made by those working production and nonsupervisory non-farm jobs, which can include positions in the retail, warehouse, and hospitality sector. Costa said those jobs were the most appropriate cohort to compare with farmworkers.
Costa said a farmworker might get paid less for numerous reasons, including that government investigations into wage issues are almost nonexistent.
“They can pretty much pay whatever they want without the real chance they are going to be investigated,” said Costa, who recently wrote that investigations by the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division have plummeted by more than 60 percent since 2000, and that fewer than 1 percent of all farm employee wages are investigated each year.
Regarding raising Oklahoma’s minimum wage, Costa said it would benefit some farmworkers, but the current average pay indicates many are already paid above $15 an hour.
H-2A workers, who are foreign nationals the government allows to fill temporary agricultural jobs, are paid $15.55 an hour in Oklahoma, a rate set by the federal government based on local farmworker pay.
“That H-2A pay rate doesn’t come from nowhere; that comes from a survey of the region,” Costa said. “That’s what farmers are already paying, so I think the argument that a higher minimum wage would significantly increase farmworker wages is not accurate.”
An increased minimum wage could also impact meat packing facilities, which in Oklahoma pay an average of $14.61 an hour, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Recently, Bachoco OK Foods, a poultry processing company, listed a production worker job at its Muldrow facility at $14.50 an hour. A similar job at the company’s Oklahoma City facility was listed at $17.25 an hour, indicating higher pay in urban communities.
However, in Guymon, located in the state’s rural panhandle region, the pork processor Seaboard Foods lists some jobs at $17.25 per hour.
Supporters of raising the Oklahoma minimum wage for all jobs say it's long overdue because the rate has remained the same since 2009.
“When adjusted for inflation, the minimum wage has lost more than 27% of its value since 2009,” attorneys for Raise the Wage Oklahoma wrote in a legal response to the Oklahoma Farm Bureau’s challenge. “And while 30 other states have set their own, higher minimum wages, Oklahoma is stuck at the $7.25 federal rate. Years of inaction by the state Legislature have led the people of Oklahoma to take matters into their own hands.”
Opponents of wage increase make case to Oklahoma Supreme Court
In its lawsuit, the Oklahoma Farm Bureau claims the proposed minimum wage increase delegates state power to the federal government because increases after 2029 would be set by the consumer price index, which the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics manages.
Oklahoma’s minimum wage shouldn’t be subject to “the discretionary judgments or unelected federal officials,” the lawsuit claims.
During a state Supreme Court hearing in January to consider the lawsuit, some justices questioned how the federal government doesn’t already dictate the state’s minimum wage since Oklahoma currently uses the federal minimum wage.
“Under the current law, if the federal government were to raise its minimum wage to $30 per hour, then all Oklahoma employers covered by the state’s minimum wage laws would be required to pay their employees that amount,” said Melanie Wilson Rughani, an Oklahoma City-based attorney representing Raise the Wage Oklahoma.
Salisbury, the Tulsa area farmer with dozens of employees, submitted testimony to the court. In his testimony, Salisbury said he currently pays all his employees above the minimum wage, but an increase would tip “that scale out of balance.”
“In practice, all wages will inevitably increase in order to rebalance that scale, the first domino knocked over in an intricately weaved pattern, bringing one economic hurdle after another to Oklahoma employers and consumers,” Salisbury wrote.
Steve Thompson, senior director of public policy for the Oklahoma Farm Bureau, told Investigate Midwest that Salisbury’s situation is standard across the state.
“Most of our folks are telling us they are having to pay over the minimum wage now,” Thompson said. “But if you increase the bottom [wage], now you need to reset all the other values.”
Thompson also said the Oklahoma Farm Bureau was concerned about ending the state minimum wage exemption for feed store workers and specific agribusiness jobs, such as those who work on farm equipment. A $15 minimum wage would be too high for some agricultural businesses to pay, Thompson added.
“We talk about oil and gas in Oklahoma and how it impacts other industries, that if that sector is hurt, it ripples out to negatively impact others,” Thompson said. “But we also need to talk about the agribusiness sector in the same way. This would have a big impact.”
Bureau’s legal fund backs fights against anti-ag cases
The bureau’s challenge to the minimum wage petition is led by the Oklahoma Farm Bureau Legal Foundation, a separate nonprofit entity started in 2002 that has amassed a sizable war chest used to fund legal cases.
The legal foundation “supports the rights and freedoms of farmers and ranchers by promoting individual liberties, private property rights and free enterprise,” according to Monte Tucker, vice president of the nonprofit foundation, who submitted an affidavit to the Supreme Court arguing against the minimum wage increase.
In 2022, the foundation had more than $418,000 in cash, according to its tax records with the IRS. In recent years, it has spent money on legal challenges in Oklahoma and several other states:
- In 2019, the foundation sent $10,000 to the Fair Lines America Foundation for litigation on the Right to Farm state question in North Carolina.
- In 2021, the foundation sent $5,000 to Coloradans for Animal Care, an organization fighting stricter regulations on animal standards of care.
- In 2022, the foundation sent $3,900 to the North Carolina Farm Bureau for its legal challenge of Sackett v. EPA before the U.S. Supreme Court.
- Also, in 2022, the foundation spent $1,000 in the legal fight against California’s Proposition 12, which set new hog confinement standards.
Raise the Wage Oklahoma registered as a political action committee with the Oklahoma Ethics Commission on Jan. 30, 2024, but has yet to file any financial reports.
Thompson, the director of public policy for Oklahoma Farm Bureau, said it was important for his organization to jump into legal cases that specifically impact agriculture.
“I don’t know that the [minimum wage petition] was designed as an attack on agriculture, but it wipes out a series of things that deal with us and the unique aspect of our industry,” Thompson said. “So we need to be involved in these fights.”
This story was distributed by the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri. Newsrooms can sign up to run stories like this one for free.
