On January 25, 300 farm workers protested Washington’s agricultural overtime law that went into full effect on the first of the Year. This comes after a two-year phase-in. Farmers, including dairy farmers, were required to begin paying overtime for any of their employees who worked more than a 40-hour week in 2021.
The rally, which seeks to advocate for seasonal exceptions to overtime requirements, has garnered support from various tree fruit and other agricultural industries. Hundreds of farm workers, many from central and eastern Wash., took to the state capitol Thursday. While they are not against being paid overtime, the group said the reality of this new law is their employees are capping their hours at 40 hours a week resulting in less pay overall.
This, of course, is not true for all agricultural employers. Fourth-generation dairy farmer, Jason Sheehan, who runs J & K Dairy located 45 minutes outside of the Tri-Cities in eastern Wash., has been paying some form of overtime pay to his dairy employees for years, as he watched other states slowly introduce overtime practices.
The Sheehan’s dairy employs 38 full-time workers, of which 80% have been there for three years and of those experienced staff, more than a third have 10 to 24 years with the dairy, Sheehan reports.
“Yes, we have people that have been with us for a long time,” Sheehan says. “If the pay was an issue with our employees, they would have gone and found work elsewhere.”
Sheehan’s employees average between 50-60 hours a week, as cutting hours is not something they have considered doing. Like most farmers who are also owner-operators, the Sheehan’s haven’t reduced their own hours. Instead, they plow forward, even when they hit 40 hours by mid-week.
“We have to work until the job gets done,” he says. “That is the farmer’s motto and really what we can focus on is continuing to do a good job of taking care of our cows, land and employees, and deal with the punches as they are thrown at us.”
The Senate Labor and Commerce Committee was scheduled to hold a hearing on Jan. 30 on a bill to let farms raise the overtime threshold to 50 hours for 12 weeks a year, a “seasonality clause” sought by agricultural employees for peak harvest times.
While dairy is not seasonal, the rising minimum wage and other industries competing for labor makes retaining good farm labor a top concern for dairy producers. According to Stan Moore with Michigan State University Dairy Extension, labor costs are about 14% of a dairy’s total expenses. A recent USDA Ag Prices Report outlined that labor expenses were up 7.3.% compared to 2020 and are at a 20-year high.
California was the first state to implement overtime rules for farming operations (on a phased-in approach).
