“Where I live, there are a lot of sheep,” said Saulo Aldazabal Inga, from Chaquiococha, Peru, of how he ended up working as a sheepherder in California. “I raised animals with my parents starting when I was a child.” Several years ago, a friend helped Aldazabal Inga get an H-2A, a temporary agricultural worker visa, to the United States. Now, he is about to finish the visa’s three-year period, during which he has been working in Lake County, California, and head home to Peru for three months. In October, he’ll return for another three years.
This next time around, however, he could make a lot more money. On January 1, 2022, California’s agricultural worker overtime pay rules went into effect for sheepherders employed by operations with 25 or fewer employees. Getting paid overtime means that this year, sheepherder pay jumped from just under $2,500 per month to about $3,400 per month, a figure that will increase incrementally to $4,500 by 2025.
“The state has all these goals to be carbon-neutral and the sheep are doing it, we just have to prove it. But it feels like they’re going to wipe out the industry before we can.”
Producers argue that the new overtime rules will devastate California’s sheep industry. The California Wool Growers’ Association (CWGA) is suing the state over the rule, arguing that it was inappropriate to include sheepherders, who have long been treated as an exceptional category by both immigration and labor law.
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