Fact Sheet: Background: Despite the fact that they perform some of the most physically-demanding jobs – with pay and working conditions at levels that most Americans would not tolerate – California’s farm workers continue to be excluded from overtime laws enjoyed by most American workers. Problem: 1938, then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt was forced to exclude the nation’s farm workers from FLSA protections. At that time, the vast majority of the nation’s agricultural workers were African American; today, most are Latinos. The only California governor to address one of the discriminatory practices against farm workers – denying them overtime pay for extra hours worked – was then-Governor Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown, Jr., who signed legislation in 1976 to establish overtime for farm workers after 10 hours worked in a day or 60 hours worked in a week. More than three decades later, in 2010, then-Senator Dean Florez authored SB 1121 to ensure that farm workers are afforded what other workers are eligible to receive under overtime laws – including overtime pay after eight hours, after 40 hours worked in a week, and working more than eight hours on the seventh day. SB 1121 passed both houses of the Legislature and reached the desk of former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who vetoed the measure. Solution: Assemblymember Michael Allen introduced AB 1313 to pursue the same objectives as those contained in SB 1121. Farm workers, whose labors help deliver food to our tables, are not second-class citizens. They are as deserving of fair treatment, and dignity on the job, as anyone else who works in California. By becoming law, AB 1313 would help correct a grievous wrong that can no longer be tolerated in a state that, time and time again, has set the standard for improving conditions on the job for working people. AB 1313 is sponsored by the United Farm Workers of America.
| CA Assembly denies farm workers equal rights to overtime pay, continuing 74-yr long wait for justice
Keene, CA--United Farm Workers President Arturo S. Rodriguez issued the following statement after the California Assembly in a 34-33 vote on Friday, rejected AB 1313. The measure would have given farm workers the right to receive overtime pay for working more than eight-hours in a day or 40 hours in a week. The bill was sponsored by Assemblyman Michael Allen (D-Santa Rosa) and supported by the United Farm Workers.
"On Labor Day, every Democrat will give a speech memorializing what labor has won for America's workers. It's obvious by their votes on the farm worker overtime legislation that only some of them mean it.
AB 1313 was about equal rights and justice. Farm workers were specifically excluded from the minimum wage and overtime protections of the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act, which extended these rights to almost every other worker in the U.S. Most farm workers in the 1930s were African-Americans. Today, most farm workers are Latinos.
With so much talk about the middle class and the one-percent of Americans who possess much of the country’s wealth, it’s easy to forget about those at the bottom of America’s workforce. Every other worker in the U.S. has the right to overtime pay after working eight-hours in a day or 40 hours in a week. Wasn’t it just to extend it to this last segment of the work force?
Unfortunately, there are a lot of terrible reasons why farm workers have been excluded for 74 years. Often people ask us why? As should now be apparent, Democrats are just as vulnerable to big money as Republicans are."
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