Harold Meyerson: Farmworkers, Overtime and Days Off: A California Shame
[Harold Meyerson is editor at large of the American Prospect and a columnist for the Washington Post. He begins a six-week guest columnist stint on our the LA Times op-ed page.]
...Still, one bill that made it to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's desk last week, only to be killed by his veto, is worth looking at for what it tells us about how hard it is to clean out even antiquated moral rot, so long as powerful interests profit from it.
The bill, written by San Joaquin Valley Democratic state Sen. Dean Florez and passed by both houses of the Legislature on party-line votes, would have made agricultural workers, just like everybody else, eligible for overtime pay if they worked more than an eight-hour day. Under current law, farmworkers can collect overtime only if they've put in more than 10 hours in the fields. Florez's bill would also have given workers the right to take off one day out of every seven....
In vetoing the bill, however, the governor was echoing other traditions. Since 1941, state law has exempted farmworkers from overtime benefits (a provision that was modified in 1976 by mandating overtime for workdays exceeding 10 hours). The 1941 law was enacted to conform to the federal Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 — the law that established the first federal minimum wage and maximum hour standards.
To get the act passed, however, President Franklin Roosevelt had to cut a deal with balking Southern senators and congressmen. He had to exempt farmworkers — that is, the millions of black field hands who sustained Southern agriculture at poverty wages — from coverage. The exclusion applied to farmworkers of all colors, but its purpose was to perpetuate a Southern labor system that had its roots in slavery....
Read entire article at LA Times
...Still, one bill that made it to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's desk last week, only to be killed by his veto, is worth looking at for what it tells us about how hard it is to clean out even antiquated moral rot, so long as powerful interests profit from it.
The bill, written by San Joaquin Valley Democratic state Sen. Dean Florez and passed by both houses of the Legislature on party-line votes, would have made agricultural workers, just like everybody else, eligible for overtime pay if they worked more than an eight-hour day. Under current law, farmworkers can collect overtime only if they've put in more than 10 hours in the fields. Florez's bill would also have given workers the right to take off one day out of every seven....
In vetoing the bill, however, the governor was echoing other traditions. Since 1941, state law has exempted farmworkers from overtime benefits (a provision that was modified in 1976 by mandating overtime for workdays exceeding 10 hours). The 1941 law was enacted to conform to the federal Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 — the law that established the first federal minimum wage and maximum hour standards.
To get the act passed, however, President Franklin Roosevelt had to cut a deal with balking Southern senators and congressmen. He had to exempt farmworkers — that is, the millions of black field hands who sustained Southern agriculture at poverty wages — from coverage. The exclusion applied to farmworkers of all colors, but its purpose was to perpetuate a Southern labor system that had its roots in slavery....