Ending a nearly 80-year-long practice of applying separate rules to agricultural workers, California Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law a bill granting agricultural laborers the same right to overtime pay as most other hourly workers. More than 825,000 laborers are expected to benefit.

“The hundreds of thousands of men and women who work in California’s fields, dairies and ranches feed the world and anchor our economy. They will finally be treated equally under the law,” said San Diego Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, the bill’s author.

Under the new regulations, farmworkers can earn time-and-a-half pay after eight hours of work in a day or 40 hours in a week. Previously, overtime pay kicked in after 10 hours in a day or 60 in a week. The law will be phased in over time, taking full effect in 2022 for most businesses and in 2025 for farms with 25 or fewer employees.

The California law is the first of its kind in the nation. Since the 1930s, the federal government has exempted farmworkers from certain labor rights, including overtime-pay requirements.

This victory comes more than half a century after labor icons Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta first organized California’s agricultural laborers into the United Farm Workers. That union strongly lobbied for the new bill.

Los Angeles Times, Aug. 29
Associated Press, Sept. 12