While a small number of states provide some form of overtime pay to farmworkers, California is alone in providing overtime pay to all laborers in the state after 40 hours, farmworker advocates say. The state’s junior senator, Alex Padilla, has introduced legislation that would ensure overtime fairness is extended to all farmworkers.
“It’s long overdue that we fix our nation’s labor laws to include the farm workers who have been unjustly excluded from their protections,” Padilla said. “These migrants deserve to be treated with dignity and paid fairly for their difficult and essential work. The Senate must pass the Fairness for Farm Workers Act to finally bring economic justice to these workers.”
RELATED STORY: House Democrats reintroduce bill ending racist exclusion of farmworkers from national labor law
Campaign Action
In reintroducing The Fairness for Farmworkers Act in the House last year, Arizona Rep. Raúl Grijalva noted that the vast majority of farmworkers have been excluded from overtime pay after they (along with domestic workers) were intentionally excluded from the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which established federal standards for minimum wage and overtime pay.
This racist exclusion has persisted for decades, despite the fact that these are the workers who harvest the foods we eat. This injustice has continued throughout the novel coronavirus pandemic, as research has shown that these workers have contracted COVID-19 “at much higher rates than people in any other occupation.”
“Although farm workers gained some minimum wage protections in 1966, exclusions on overtime have persisted,” Padilla’s office said. “This bill would gradually implement overtime pay over the course of four years and bring greater equity to the American agricultural industry. As of 2020, over a trillion dollars of America’s GDP and one in ten jobs are linked to agriculture.”
The legislation has support of labor leaders like United Farm Workers (UFW) President Teresa Romero, who said that the “fundamentally racist, Jim Crow-era exclusions” from the FLSA were “wrong then,” and “wrong now.”
“These workers are denied the right to overtime pay even though they do backbreaking work, and we are encouraged that this will be the year to change that,” Romero continued. “The discriminatory exclusion of farm workers from overtime pay has continued for far too long,” said UFW Foundation Executive Director Diana Tellefson Torres. “It is time we right this grievous national wrong by finally extending overtime pay to all U.S. farm workers. Farm workers help put food on our tables and deserve equal workplace rights.”
“Currently, California is the only state that provides overtime pay to all agricultural workers after 40 hours a week or 8 hours a day,” UFW said. “In Washington state, only dairy workers currently receive overtime pay after working 40 hours a week. All other WA state farm workers receive overtime pay after working 55 hours per week—that cap will drop to 40 hours per week in 2024. Few other states, such as New York, offer overtime pay to farm workers but at higher thresholds, while the overwhelming majority do not have overtime pay for farm workers whatsoever.”
Romero and Tellefson Torres noted that Padilla was only one of two U.S. senators (along with New Jersey’s Cory Booker) to accept a challenge to work alongside farm laborers for one day. Padilla said that accepting the “Take Our Jobs” challenge was “a small dose of the demanding work that farm workers do to feed millions of families across the country and strengthen our economy.”
Grijalva said in reintroducing the Fairness for Farm Workers Act last year that the bill was also a part of the immigration overhaul proposed by the president. While the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021 failed to advance, a bill that would put undocumented farmworkers onto a path to legalization passed the House last year. However, the Farm Workforce Modernization Act has also stalled in the Senate. UFW cofounder Dolores Huerta is among advocates who has urged the chamber to take up the bill, reminding us that farmworkers are still feeding America, and still need relief.
RELATED STORIES:
Padilla: 'Fundamentally wrong' to deem undocumented workers essential yet deny them protections
So far only Alex Padilla and Cory Booker have accepted farmworkers' challenge
Farmworkers urge Newsom to sign pro-union bill: 'Why can’t we have the same rights?'