California Farmworkers to Get Overtime Pay After 8 Hours Under New Law

California agricultural workers will become the first in the U.S. to receive overtime pay if they work more than eight hours a day, under a law signed Monday by Gov. Jerry Brown. The law means that farmworkers in the state will be treated like employees in other industries, where overtime generally is paid after a standard eight-hour day. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which established a national minimum wage, overtime and the 40-hour workweek among work standards, exempted farmworkers. Before the law was signed, farmworkers here made overtime pay if they worked more than 10 hours a day or 60 hours a week. Only California and three other states—Hawaii, Maryland and Minnesota—offered any overtime pay for farmworkers, according to the office of Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, a Democrat who authored the law...more