On Aug. 29 the state Senate approved a bill to expand overtime pay for California farmworkers, who now only receive overtime pay for shifts longer than 10 hours. Another was James Wood, of District 2, which includes Kenwood.
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The Assembly rejected the proposal in June, when eight Democrats opposed it and another six refused to vote. His opponent, former assemblymember and State Senate 3 candidate Mariko Yamada, condemned the action in a statement released today.
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. This week, California lawmakers took a step toward eradicating one of those carveouts. Unlike those in other hourly jobs, if farmers work more than 40 hours a week they are not guaranteed any overtime pay.
The arguments were strong from a farm industry seeking to maintain an 80-year-old exemption from labor laws that created the eight-hour work day for American workers.
The bill is now on it’s way to the desk of Governor Jerry Brown.
“Though well-intentioned, this bill hurts farmers and farm workers”, said Assembly Republican Leader Chad Mayes (R-Yucca Valley). Wilson says it more a matter of a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. The New Deal-era Fair Labor Standards Act, passed by Congress in 1938, established the nation’s first overtime pay requirement but exempted farm labor when Southern tobacco and cotton states objected to equal pay for white and black workers.
Currently, California farm workers are not eligible for overtime pay until they work more than 10 hours a day or 60 hours a week. He says that’s the big problem with predicting how new overtime rules will affect farmworkers and their employers.
“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. Isom hopes Governor Brown will see this bill as an added negative impact tied to the recently passed increases to California’s minimum wage.
The bill would further burden growers who are already challenged with increasing minimum wage rates, regulatory compliance costs, paid time off mandates, and health care provisions, Groot said. On Monday, California lawmakers passed a bill that would change that. “The 10 hour work day in agriculture allowed agricultural employees to work more hours during a shorter period of time”.
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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.
