Under the current law, California employers must pay time-and-a-half to farmworkers after 10 hours a day or 60 hours a week.
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The legislation requires that farmworkers be paid overtime if they work more than eight hours in a single day.
Olsen says the majority of farm workers were against the bill.
The 44-32 vote sends the bill to Gov.
Currently, if these employees work a 10-hour day they start accruing overtime pay after those 10 hours instead of eight like most employees in California.
“We want to pay our workers the best we can and promote them within the company and this puts another mandated restriction on what our workers can work”, he says.
There is a false narrative permeating in the politics of this discussion-many would believe agricultural workers receive no overtime pay for their work.
Democrats from the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles County overwhelmingly supported the bill, as did some Democrats from more inland districts, such as as Assembly members Joaquin Arambula, D-Fresno, and Jose Medina, D-Riverside.
According to the United Farm Workers, the largest union for farm workers and a key sponsor of the bill, the lack of overtime protection for agricultural laborers has its roots in the Jim Crow era, when most farmworkers were African-American.
We welcome the passage of AB 1066, the overtime bill. Assemblymember Tony Thurmond, D-Richmond, said it was about giving farmworkers “a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work”.
Roger Isom, president of the Western Agricultural Processors Association (WAPA) and the California Cotton Ginners and Growers Association (CCGGA), said AB 1066 just places additional burdens on the farmer. She says the United Farm Workers Union represented a vocal minority. Bill Monning, D-Carmel. “The bill phases in the overtime pay, and the fact that both the Senate and the Assembly supported AB 1066 is a testament to the respect we have for farmworkers and the importance of working toward equality in pay for all California workers”. This “sleight of hand”, as Groot called it, is called “gut and amend”. In what Gonzalez has described as an unprecedented move to revive the bill, she worked around the Legislature’s rules and reinserted the proposal in another bill, angering Republicans who objected to the breach in procedure.
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A 2010 effort to give farmworkers a fair shake in overtime wages was vetoed by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. “Today, 78 years later, when farm workers are mainly Latino, this shameful legacy of racism and discrimination still infects our society”, UFW said in a statement. “Sometimes, for that reason, you make that economic sacrifice”.
“Due to the seasonality of farm work because our labor hinges on weather and the crop being restricted when we can harvest it and when we can do certain things it lets our people work longer in the fields”, he says.
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Senate: Anthony Cannella, R-Ceres, No; Bill Monning, D-Monterey, Yes.
