Starting in 2019, the new law would gradually expand overtime pay for California’s estimated 825,000 farm workers.
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Beginning January 1, 2022, the bill would require any work performed by a person in an agricultural occupation, to be paid double their regular rate if they were over 12 hours in one day.
The United Farm Workers union says California would be the first state to require that farmworkers receive extra pay after eight hours. The new law would give them overtime after eight hours a day or 40 hours a week.
Opponents, including agricultural industry representatives, said supporters of the bill fundamentally misunderstand how farm labor works.
“The fruit doesn’t stop ripening because it’s five o’clock”, Cecil said.
Farmworkers now are not eligible for overtime until they have worked 10 hours a day or 60 hours a week. “We righted an 80-year-old wrong and said that hourly workers will have the same overtime protections, whether they are picking vegetables in a field, manufacturing their containers in a factory or selling them in a store”, said Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, D-Paramount.
Flipping the proponents’ argument, critics said the well-intentioned measure would hurt laborers by leading to cuts in their hours and economic hardship for the farms that employ them. “For me, it is a vote about my conscience”, said Democratic Assemblyman Eduardo Garcia.
Philip Martin, professor emeritus of agricultural economics at the University of California, Davis, says there is no data on exactly who works how many hours when it comes to USA farmworkers.
Restricting farmworkers to a shorter day or work week will not guarantee overtime pay, said Groot. Setting a 60-hour-a-week benchmark for more wages makes far more sense given the long hours of harvest season, they said.
AB 1066 was officially introduced by Assembly members Gonzalez and joint authors Rob Bonta (D-Oakland), Cristina Garcia (D-Downey), Roger Hernández (D-West Covina), Reginald Jones-Sawyer, Sr.
A similar version of the bill was defeated by two votes in June.
California Is Poised To Close Jim Crow-Era Loophole That’s Still Punishing Farmworkers TodayFarmworkers in the California legislature showing support for the overtime bill.
The strike fizzled with no legislative accomplishments under former Republican Gov. Ronald Reagan.
“There may be situations where people may believe that they will lose something in terms of economics, but my father taught me that it was more than about the money, it was about who he was as a man and it was about him being respected by everyone else like everyone else”, said Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, D-San Diego, whose father was a sharecropper.
Agriculture leaders are calling for all concerned to put pressure on Governor Brown to veto AB 1066 by Emailing or phoning constantly.
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