When Shelley Stein heard about Senate Bill 9509 to eliminate the Farm Laborers Wage Board, she had to jump on it immediately, she says.
The 2019 Farm Workers Fair Labor Practices Act contained a provision to create a Wage Board to evaluate lowering the overtime threshold for farm laborers below 60 hours a week. In January 2022, the Wage Board recommended lowering the threshold to 40 hours over 10 years starting in 2024.
Not only was the Wage Board’s creation and the ensuing recommendation ill-conceived, but the provision also went against the majority of public hearing testimony that opposed the board in the first place, Stein said Wednesday.
“(Testimonies) indicated that nobody wanted any change to the overtime threshold of 60 hours of the work week, that was from farmers, farm workers and industry stakeholders. However, the wage board did vote to reduce the number of hours and to continue to reduce it until it got down to 40 hours of work,” she said during the Ways and Means meeting. “The Commissioner of Labor has been given the responsibility to make the final determination and what this Senate bill does is, it recognizes that there is only one person who is familiar with agriculture on the three-member board. Their actions do not mirror what the major request was during this process. And so, it’s time to throw out the wage board.”
Legislator Christian Yunker, also from a farming family, agreed, adding that the wage board had flaws from the start.
“The idea of the wage...
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