Researcher: Overtime law costing farmworkers $100 per week

By Caleb Hampton

One hundred dollars a week.

That’s how much California’s agricultural overtime law has cost farmworkers, according to University of California, Berkeley, assistant professor Alexandra Hill. 

In 2023, Hill published research showing the state’s 2016 agricultural overtime law had not achieved its goal of increasing earnings for farmworkers. On the contrary, she found, Assembly Bill 1066 caused workers to lose hours and pay as farmers shortened the workweek to balance their wage bills. 

Beginning in 2019, AB 1066 phased in a requirement that farmworkers—like employees in most sectors—be paid time and a half when they work more than five days a week or eight hours a day. Previously, farmworkers worked up to 60 hours a week before they were entitled to overtime pay. 

During the first two years of the phase-in, the proportion of farmworkers employed for more than 50 hours a week—the overtime threshold at that point—dropped by half, according to Hill’s research, which analyzed data from 2019 and 2020. 

The changes brought about by AB 1066 “may not be benefiting the workers they aim to protect,” the study concluded. 

Since publishing her 2023 study, Hill has continued to analyze California farmworker employment data, using figures from the National Agricultural Workers Survey. 

After analyzing the most recent data available, which goes through 2022, Hill told Ag Alert® last month that her new findings were “quite consistent with the earlier study, and even a bit stronger and larger.”

By 2022, AB 1066 had caused California farmworkers to lose an average of five hours of employment per week, she said.  

“There is really convincing evidence that work hours for individual farmworkers fell after the law went into effect,” Hill said. “My current estimates are saying workers earned about a hundred dollars less per week on average than they would have without the law in place.”

The employment figures are consistent with observations Hill made in the field. Before AB 1066 went into effect, many farmworkers worked 60-hour weeks during the crop season, often in anticipation of going weeks without work during the off-season. Now, she said, “what I hear from employers is that they are essentially treating 40 hours a week as their cap on how much they want people to be working.”

Leticia Hermosillo, a farm crew supervisor in the Sacramento Valley, said the overtime law has created challenges for crew members struggling to keep up with rising living expenses. The crew historically worked 60-hour weeks during the seven-month crop season, but during the past few years—as the overtime law was phased in—they saw their hours slashed to 40 hours a week.

“The people on my crew are really affected,” Hermosillo told Ag Alert® earlier this year. “If they go to the store, they spend most of their paycheck on groceries.”

Hill said individual workers may have different perspectives on whether the overtime law has helped or harmed them. 

“Not surprisingly, there are mixed attitudes on how much you want to work and how much compensation you need to live a good life,” Hill said. “Some workers report liking the overtime law because it gives them more free time with their families, but the majority of workers say that they don’t like it or that they have mixed feelings about it.”

For the most part, she said, the overtime law has not led farmers to hire more workers to spread out the hours but to try to accomplish more work in fewer hours. Hill said she plans to publish an updated study on the effects of AB 1066 after analyzing employment data through 2024. 

Meanwhile, the state Legislature is set to consider a bill created to address the unintended consequences of AB 1066. Senate Bill 628, authored by state Sen. Shannon Grove, R-Bakersfield, would create a tax credit to offset the cost to farmers of paying overtime, reimbursing the “half” in “time and a half.”

The bill, whose author has cited Hill’s 2023 study, has bipartisan backing, with state Sen. Melissa Hurtado, D-Sanger, who chairs the Senate Committee on Agriculture, having voiced her support. It is designed to preserve farmworkers’ right to time and a half overtime pay while enabling farmers to offer more work hours.    

Facing rising production costs and low crop prices, farmers say they have lacked the profit margins in recent years they would need to pay overtime wages. 

“If legislators genuinely want to increase take-home pay for farmworkers, growers are going to need support from Sacramento,” Natalie Collins, president of the California Association of Winegrape Growers, which co-sponsored SB 628, said in a statement. 

If adopted, the tax credit could cost the state budget $200 million to $300 million per year, according to an estimate by the California Farm Bureau, the bill’s other co-sponsor. The figure does not factor in economic benefits the bill may create or state revenues that would derive from those benefits. 

A hearing on SB 628 is scheduled for April 23 in the state Senate Committee on Labor, Public Employment and Retirement. 

“Given the initial goals of the proponents of overtime for farmworkers, I see that bill as a big win-win,” Hill said, referring to Democrats and farmworker advocates who backed AB 1066 with the aim of increasing farmworker earnings. “It’s going to reduce state tax revenues, but those revenues go directly back to our hardworking farmworkers who I think deserve the extra earnings.”

Caleb Hampton is assistant editor of Ag Alert. He may be contacted at champton@cfbf.com.