A bill to improve farmworker pay is back in front of the California Assembly after failing by four votes in June. Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez brought the law back to the floor by tucking it into an unrelated proposal, Assembly Bill 1066, says the LA Times.
Earlier this week, the state Senate passed a version of 1066, 21-14, with Democrats arguing that the rule would “right a historic wrong” and Republicans predicting that it would hurt farmers, says the Sacramento Bee.
“We have the opportunity here in California to erase the inequality of our agricultural overtime laws that was born out of shameful racism,” Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León, a Democrat, told the Bee.
“Farmworkers were excluded when Congress first extended federal overtime provisions to most industries in 1938, an omission that de León credited to lawmakers from the South, where farmers were largely dependent on African American laborers,” said the Bee.
But Republicans have warned that the bill would force farmers to cut workers’ hours and hire a double shift, because the overtime charges would be too costly. “This bill, instead of trying to help the farmworkers, is hosing the farmworkers,” said Sen. Tom Berryhill.
Bill 1066 would grant farmworkers the same overtime policy as all other workers in the state. According to current regulations, farmworkers are guaranteed overtime pay if they work more than 10 hours a day or six days a week. If the new legislation passes, farmworkers would earn 1.5-times their regular pay for working more than eight hours a day or 40 hours a week, and double time after 12 hours. The law wouldn’t go into action until 2022, and three years after that for farms with 25 or fewer employees.