Policies and Regulations Affecting the Agriculture, Forestry, and Fishing Workforce - Agriculture Forestry and Fishing Research at NIOSH - page 307

40 hours. But the entitlement to receive overtime compensation does not apply to
any worker employed in farming or to employees engaged in the transportation or
preparation for transportation of fruits and vegetables from the farm to the place
of first processing or first marketing within the same state. Also exempted from
the overtime regulation are irrigators (often, irrigators in many western states are
obliged by their employers to keep a round-the-clock watch during the period when
water is delivered from a ditch or canal to a particular farm property). 2
The FLSA also established a federal minimum wage rate. But only farm opera-
tors who used 500 worker-days or more of agricultural labor during any calendar
quarter of the preceding calendar year are subject to the federal minimum wage
provision unless their employees are otherwise explicitly excluded by statute.
Examples of additional hired workers statutorily excluded from federal mini-
mum wage protection include

• Local hand-harvest workers who are paid a piece rate and who worked
fewer than 13 weeks in agriculture during the preceding calendar year.
• Members of the employer's immediate family.
• Migrant hand-harvest workers 16 years old and younger who are employed
on the same farm as their parents, or persons standing in place of their parents,
and who receive the same piece rates as employees more than 16 years old working
on the same farm.
•

Workers engaged mainly in the range production of livestock.

Finally, the so-called “youth minimum wage” allows payment of a submini-
mum wage of $4.25 to any worker under 20 years old during his or her first
consecutive 90 calendar days of employment with an employer (at this writing,
the federal minimum wage is $5.85) (DOL, 2007b). That provision applies to all
industry sectors, but agriculture is the only sector that allows very young children
to be employed at all.

SUPERSEDING OF FEDERAL LAWS BY STATE WORKPLACE LAWS

California was arguably the first state to enact law addressing unhealthful
conditions among AFF workers. In 1915, in response to public outcry over hor-
rific labor-camp conditions at a northern California farm and a violent confron-
tation between several thousand workers and sheriffs at the camp, known as the
Wheatland Hop Riot of 1913, the California legislature enacted the Labor Camp

2 FLSA, Sec. 13(b)(12).