Overtime bill for agricultural workers marks a historic change for workers and industry

By Mai Hoang

Yakima Herald-Republic

In December 2016, Jose Martinez-Cuevas and Patricia Aguilar sued their former Yakima Valley employer, DeRuyter Brothers Dairy, with the hopes of receiving payment for what they claimed were unpaid rest breaks, meal periods and overtime wages for themselves and their co-workers.

They and farmworker advocates also wanted to reach a long-term objective: To end a decades-old provision in the state’s minimum-wage law that made agricultural workers ineligible for overtime pay.

Nearly five years later, that goal is within sight. Gov. Jay Inslee is expected to sign Senate Bill 5172 into law. Under the bill, which passed both chambers of the Legislature with bipartisan support, all agricultural workers will start receiving overtime pay in 2022 and have a 40-hour workweek by early 2024.

The bill’s passage comes months after the Washington Supreme Court ruled that the overtime exemption for dairy workers violated the state Constitution. The bill removes that exemption for all agricultural workers, not just dairy workers, who have been paid overtime since the court ruling.

It is part of a wave of momentum for legislation to extend overtime pay to farmworkers. Several states, including California, have passed laws or are considering legislation that provides overtime pay for agricultural workers. President Joe Biden has said removing the federal overtime exemption for agricultural workers is one of his priorities.

Farmworker advocates say the bill is another step toward ending decades of inequality, as that workforce is overwhelmingly made up of people of color.

“Just thinking back to the second-class citizenship that farmworkers (had) and the way they’ve been treated — (the bill) is a step to ending that,” said Edgar Franks, political and campaign director for Familias Unidas por la Justicia. The farmworkers union in Burlington has aided Yakima Valley agricultural workers in organization efforts.

The changes will be significant for growers. The agriculture industry, including small, family-owned farms, must grapple with a system that has used the overtime exemption to maintain affordability for consumers and provide profitability to growers.

Manuel Imperial, co-owner of Wapato-based Imperial Gardens, said that he’s not receiving nearly enough revenue to shoulder the additional costs. Imperial said labor costs make up 60% of his expenses.

He testified during hearings about the bill, stating the difficulty of absorbing additional costs when the income he receives for his product has not proportionally increased.

“I don’t mind paying overtime if I can get more money out of my product,” Imperial said.

Agriculture industry officials hope for future tweaks that would provide additional relief to growers, such as a seasonality provision to give growers a higher hourly threshold for overtime during peak harvest periods. They were happy to get some industry provisions, such as a three-year phase-in period and protection from retroactive overtime claims.

“There will be an opportunity to keep talking about (a seasonality exemption) in the phase-in period,” said Jon DeVaney, president of the Washington State Tree Fruit Association.

Farmworker advocates, however, are wary of anything that would erode protections for farmworkers.

“At the end of the day, overtime is a health and safety protection,” said Elizabeth Strater, director of strategic campaigns for United Farm Workers, a union that represents farmworkers, including several units in Washington state.

The union has pushed for policies to increase equity for farmworkers.

“The human body is not meant to endure limitless hours of work,” she said. “Especially work that is grueling and backbreaking. In the end, this is a moral question. With this bill passing with such strong support, it’s a moral referendum whether farmworkers deserve equity.”

Long-standing inequality

Advocates put decades of effort into pushing for the end of the overtime exemption for agriculture workers, a policy they say is rooted in racial inequity.

The tendency to exclude farmworkers from overtime wages at the federal level dates to the 1930s, when the agricultural workforce was primarily Black, Strater said

Now, most farmworkers come from Mexico and other Latin American countries, said Carlos Gil, a professor emeritus of history at the University of Washington. Many hailed from countries that paid even less and were simply happy to receive any pay increase.

“I think that has made it difficult for farmworkers themselves to demand proper treatment,” Gil said.

The overtime exemption at the state level dates back to the minimum wage law passed in 1959. That law requires workers to earn overtime pay for any time worked above 40 hours each week, but provided exemptions for several industries, including agriculture.