'A historic change': California first state to pass overtime pay for farm workers

Farm workers in California are celebrating this week after governor Jerry Brown signed a new law on Monday entitling them to the same overtime pay as most other hourly workers in the state.

California, the largest producer of agricultural goods in the country, is the first state to introduce time-and-a-half pay for farm workers after eight hours of work a day, or 40 hours a week.

But while it’s a landmark decision in California, it’s unlikely that the rest of the country will rush to implement similar legislation since most other states don’t have any overtime laws in place pertaining to farm workers, said Ross Pifer, director of Pennsylvania State University’s agricultural law center.

“Agriculture will be watching this and will take note of it,” he said. “But if they didn’t follow California in implementing those overtime limits, I’m not sure they’re going to be following them now.”

However, it’s possible the new law could affect neighboring states that have similar agriculture to California, Pifer added.

“Arizona, for example, has extensive fruit and vegetable production and relies heavily on farm workers to produce these labor-intensive crops,” he said.

A few other states including Hawaii, Maryland and Minnesota do offer overtime protection to farm workers, but not after eight hours of work, said Veronica Wilson, partnerships director at the UCLA Labor Center. Most other states and federal law don’t cover overtime pay.

“When you’re talking about raising the wage and hour protections floor, it’s an uphill battle, but we just won in the biggest farm worker state in the country, and that bodes well for workers across the nation,” said Wilson.

California’s more than 800,000 farm workers are currently entitled to overtime pay after working 10 hours in a day, or 60 hours a week. The new rules will be phased in over a four-year period starting in 2019. They will be in full effect for the majority of businesses by 2022, and by 2025 for companies with 25 or fewer employees.

A similar proposal in June fell short of the three votes it needed to pass.

“It’s a truly historic change for farm workers in California,” Arturo Rodriguez, president of the United Farms Workers, the union that sponsored the bill, told the Guardian. “This will give future generations the opportunity to be treated like other workers in the US.”

California is the largest producer of agricultural goods in the country, providing over one-third of the country’s vegetables and two-thirds of its fruits and nuts, according to the California Department of Food and Agriculture. The majority of farm workers – over 90% - in the state are Latino, and nearly 80% aren’t US citizens.

Farm workers have for decades been exempt from the basic labor protections established by the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which provided for minimum wage, overtime pay and child labor standards. Back then, Southern Democrats refused to sign legislation that would protect African Americans, who made up the bulk of the farming workforce, said Wilson.

In the 1960s, farm workers, led by labor organizer and civil rights activist Cesar Chavez, fought for a minimum wage and for the right to collectively bargain.

Brown has a history of working on behalf of farmers’ rights. He signed a landmark bill allowing farm workers to unionize in 1975, during his first term as governor.

“Better protections for farm workers has been a struggle for close to 80 years, given this racist legacy of excluding certain categories of workers,” said Wilson. “Farm workers have had to fight for policy change state-by-state, and California has been a leader.”

Opponents say the new law will increase costs for farmers, and force them to limit work hours and hire more employees. The seasonal nature of agriculture means long hours are necessary during sowing and harvesting.

Raising cattle “doesn’t always fall within a 40-hour work week or eight-hour work day,” said Justin Oldfield, vice president of government relations at the California Cattlemen’s Association. “The simple one-size-fits-all approach offered [by the law] will hurt California ranchers as we compete with producers in other states.”

The new law will likely raise the cost of production on farms, said Paul Mitchell, associate professor of agricultural and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“When you have to harvest quickly, you work more than the standard work week,” he said. “Now that’s all of a sudden going to get more expensive.”

Dairy in particular will suffer, since those farms typically operate seven days a week, and cows need to be milked multiple times a day. Small farms will also be hit hard, said Mitchell, since labor already ranks as their highest cost, and they don’t have many employees to begin with.

But as consumer awareness grows around sustainability issues, and companies compete in a tough market, agriculture across the country will have to keep pace.

“If we’re going to be truly sustainable, we have to treat labor better,” said Mitchell.