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Governor vetoes farmworkers overtime bill
Sacramento
-- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill Wednesday that would have
made California's hourly agricultural employees the only farmworkers in
the nation to receive overtime pay after 40 hours a week or eight hours
a day.
In vetoing the measure, Schwarzenegger cited the fragile economy and
said that extending overtime protections could put farms out of
business, or result in lower paychecks for agricultural workers because
farmers would hire more people and cut hours to avoid paying overtime.
The bill's author, Sen. Dean Florez, D-Shafter (Kern County), blasted
the veto. In a statement released by his office, Florez said the
Republican governor sided "with a labor practice derived from the
segregationist South," and that the veto means it is "acceptable to
treat one class of people differently from all others."
"The governor had a chance to make history," said Florez, the son of
farmworkers. "He had a chance to wipe a 70-year-old shame off the books
of California. Instead, he has decided to side with the shameful."
Schwarzenegger, however, wrote in his veto message that agricultural
work is different from other industries and noted that federal law
exempts farmworkers from overtime altogether. The governor also wrote
that he has signed other legislation that helped farmworkers, including
a bill that increased the minimum wage, and noted that he worked with
Florez to enact groundbreaking heat stress regulations.
"Unfortunately, this measure, while well-intended, will not improve the
lives of California's agricultural workers and instead will result in
additional burdens on California businesses, increased unemployment and
lower wages," Schwarzenegger wrote.
The bill, approved by lawmakers on largely party-line votes, would have
represented a fundamental shift in the way the state's estimated 700,000
agricultural workers are treated under the law. In addition to the
overtime protections, SB1121 would have given the men and women who work
in California's roughly 25 million acres of farmland the right to take
one day off every seven.
Currently, farmworkers are only eligible for overtime pay after 60 hours
a week or 10 hours a day; they have been exempt from labor protections
enjoyed by millions of other California workers since 1941.
Farmers opposed the bill, saying it isn't fair to compare field workers
to workers in other industries. They noted that farm laborers often put
in long hours in the summer but are hard-pressed to get work during the
winter months.
Farmworkers in California average $10.25 an hour, according to the
nonprofit advocacy group Farmworker Justice.
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