Monday, August 02, 2010

Schwarzenegger vetoes bill requiring overtime pay for farmworkers

Saying he didn't want to hurt the California agriculture industry, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill that would have given farmworkers the same right to overtime pay enjoyed by other hourly workers in the nation's largest farm state. In his veto message the Republican governor said, "applying the eight-hour day to agriculture would be burdensome to business and reverse longstanding labor practices," Marc Lifsher of the Los Angeles Times reports. The bill would have made California the first state to recognize overtime rights for farmworkers.

As recently as 1999, state lawmakers approved a bill that specifically exempted farmworkers from the eight-hour day, Schwarzenegger said, "recognizing that agricultural work is different from other industries: it is seasonal, subject to unpredictability of Mother Nature and requires the harvesting of perishable goods." Both giant agribusinesses and organic-farm owners had used similar arguments against the bill. Agriculture lobbyists said payroll costs would rise by at least 10 percent if overtime were added after eight hours.

The bill's supporters said it was wrong to treat farmworkers differently than other employees. "The governor's decision is a blow to fairness and justice. We will have to wait for a new governor to right this wrong," Democratic state Sen. Darrell Steinberg told Lifsher, referring to the end of Schwarzenegger's term in January. Democratic Senate Majority Leader Dean Florez accused the governor of  "turning his back on history" by choosing "to continue the second-class treatment of the men and women who toil in the fields, their backbreaking labor at the core of a more than $30-billion-a-year agricultural industry." (Read more)

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