California Farm Workers May Finally Get Standard Overtime Pay

California’s farm workers may soon be covered under national labor overtime laws like any other worker if Governor Jerry Brown signs into law a newly-passed bill, that landed on his desk Monday.

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The bill, AB 1066, passed the assembly on its second try Monday after passing the senate last week. It defined the workday of farm workers—overwhelmingly immigrant and about half undocumented—the same as the work day of any other worker: eight hours a day, 40 hours a week.

Rather than qualifying for partial overtime pay after 10 hours, as is the custom now, farm workers will get the standard overtime rates: time and a half after eight hours and double time after 12 hours.

The victory, they said, is for them.

Assemblymembers Lorena Gonzalez and Rob Bonta, who introduced the bill and co-authored it, respectively, both grew up among families of agricultural workers and knew Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers movement intimately.

"These workers have been the face of this bill," Gonzalez told union leaders in front of the assembly. “They're the ones who pushed it, not just today but for decades in California."

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Farm workers were exempted from the minimum wage and overtime pay in 1938, which Bonta said amounts to racism.

He staged a 24-hour fast before the vote as an extra push for the bill, which received heavy lobbying against its passage from agribusiness.

Several reports have shown that farm workers regularly face substandard working conditions that would not be tolerated in other industries, with limited access to healthcare and housing.