California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed Assembly Bill 2646, setting a minimum wage of $19.75 an hour for agricultural workers from January, after which it will rise each year by the cost-of-living adjustment applied to Social Security benefits, DTN farm business editor Chris Clayton reports.
The law effectively raises the floor for H-2A guest workers and other covered farm labourers to $19.75. Under the federal H-2A rule the minimum H-2A wage in California was $16.90 an hour, after the Labor Department lowered the Adverse Effect Wage Rates nationally, a change farmworker groups are challenging in court.
California farms employ about 35,000 workers through the H-2A programme, out of roughly 850,000 people who work on a farm in the state at some point in the year, and average more than 400,000 full-time equivalent farm workers.
Thirty farm and business groups had urged Newsom to veto the bill, saying it meant a 14 percent wage increase that would add hundreds of millions of dollars to labour costs and likely push up food prices. Dave Puglia, president and CEO of Western Growers, called it "another new economically stupid mandate" and said most farmers can neither absorb nor pass on the cost, noting the state has lost nearly 30 percent of its family farms in 25 years. The California Farm Bureau said 86 percent of farmers have second jobs and cannot pass on cost increases as other industries do.
The bill was sponsored by the United Farm Workers, which argued it protects farmworkers against wage depression, and was backed by groups including the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation.
Photo: Charles O'Rear, U.S. National Archives / Wikimedia Commons (Public domain)
Source: DTN / Progressive Farmer
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