“Farmworkers were first excluded from the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act, which set standards for minimum wage, child labor laws, overtime pay and more”. As reported by the Pacific Coast Business Times, Roman Pinal, regional director of the UFW, said, “Every industry has figured out how to usher in the 8-hour day and to compensate their workers time and half when they demand, when they require, more time”. That’s longer than the overtime pay for other workers, who get it after eight hours a day or 40 hours a week.
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“Farmworkers won’t view themselves as lower-class citizens”, he said. It is something entirely worse to dismiss economic reality.
The law will gradually go into force over the course of several years, beginning in 2019. It will take full effect in 2022 for most businesses and in 2025 for farms with 25 or fewer employees.
“We are letting the signature speak for itself”, said Deborah Hoffman, a spokesperson for the governor.
“This is a truly historic day in California”.
“We’ve been able to break the barrier for farmworkers here in California”, Rodriguez said, according to the AP. However, California was the first state to give its agricultural workers bargaining rights, workers compensation, and unemployment services. They will finally be treated equally under the law. “It is a good day”.
Farm work, marked by crushing workloads during specific periods, has always been exempted from some of the labor standards enacted by the federal government beginning in the 1930s, including overtime pay.
Brown said budget concerns led him to veto all seven bills. “The box stores, grocery chains and restaurant companies that buy fresh produce can and will purchase from growers in other states and countries to keep prices down. I commend Gov. Brown for ensuring strong, sensible safeguards for farmworkers and their families, and I commend the California legislature for their ongoing efforts to protect the most vulnerable workers in their state”. With these laws, California farmworkers will have the same overtime protections that workers in other industries have enjoyed for decades, and overtime protections for domestic workers implemented in 2013 will continue.
Interestingly enough, in 1976, Gov.
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Brown, a Democrat, cited imperatives of fiscal restraint and viable revenue streams in blocking the bipartisan bill, which would have added tampons, sanitary napkins and other menstrual products to a list of necessities such as food and prescription medicines that are exempt from sales tax. “They will see themselves as another part of the state’s economy”. “The implications of this bill are far reaching and the message from Sacramento is clear – mechanize or leave the state”.
