Farmworkers lament loss of hours and pay

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By Caleb Hampton  

Araceli Aceves Cortés used to get by working in the fields and orchards of the Sacramento Valley. 

For 60 hours a week, when seasonal work was available, the mother of three pruned nut trees or tended fields of melons or tomatoes in Colusa County. 

She paid her rent. She stocked up on meat and vegetables a week at a time. In the evenings, she helped her children with their homework.

But her life changed when California phased in a 2016 law entitling farmworkers to more overtime benefits. The law was meant to raise wages. Instead, Aceves Cortés lost a third of her work hours and about a third of her income. After paying her bills, she didn’t have a few hundred dollars left to fill a shopping cart with groceries, so she cut back, buying necessities a few at a time. 

“Suddenly, I couldn’t cover the electricity bill,” she said. “I couldn’t pay rent.”

During the past several years, many of California’s roughly 800,000 farmworkers have seen their earnings decline, prompting state lawmakers to take action aimed at addressing the unintended impacts of the overtime law.

Unintended consequences 

From 2019 to 2025, California’s agricultural overtime law phased in a requirement that farmworkers, like workers in most sectors, be paid time and a half when they work more than eight hours a day or 40 hours a week. Previously, farmers could employ workers for up to 10 hours a day or 60 hours a week without paying overtime, and during peak seasons many did.

While some workers have benefited from the new law, a growing body of research suggests it has ended up reducing overall earnings for farmworkers as employers shortened the workweek to keep their costs down.

In December, Alexandra Hill, a University of California, Berkeley, professor who researches agricultural economics and farmworker well-being, presented ongoing research showing that by 2022, when the overtime law was partially phased in, farmworkers in California were working three to five hours less per week than a decade prior. On average, their weekly income had declined by $80 to $120.

“I would expect the effects to get larger,” said Hill, who last year interviewed farmworkers across the state. “Overwhelmingly, all the workers we’ve talked to mostly report their hours just being capped at 40.”

Those impacted to the greatest extent—farmworkers whose weekly hours were reduced from 60 to 40—have effectively lost more than $300 a week.

Quality of life

Aceves Cortés said that while she thought it was only fair that farmworkers receive overtime benefits the same as anyone else, she wasn’t getting the hours, and she didn’t have the luxury of dwelling on fairness.

“We need to survive,” she said.

Last year, to make up for lost hours, Aceves Cortés picked up a second job at a pizzeria. On a cold morning in February, she woke up at 5 a.m. and for eight hours tied down drip lines in an almond orchard. When she got home, there was just time to shower before dashing to the pizzeria to bus tables, wash dishes, and clean the bathrooms and kitchen before closing up after 9 p.m.  

“The truth is, I’d like to be home more with my children,” she said.

Aceves Cortés said working 10-hour days in the fields was also tiring. But back then, when farm work alone paid the bills, she could spend the evenings with her children. 

“Now, there are entire days where sometimes I don’t see them,” she said. “They’re asleep when I arrive, and they’re asleep when I leave.”

Hill said there are drawbacks to working 10-hour days, especially in a physically demanding profession. But in her research, she found farmworkers “reported very strong preferences for higher incomes in exchange for longer hours.”

Kimberly Clark, executive director of the California Farm Labor Contractor Association, said that when the overtime law took effect, labor contractors reported a surge in requests from farmworkers seeking referrals for second jobs.

“It’s been a big challenge,” said Leticia Hermosillo, a crew leader who has worked on Colusa County farms for 50 years. She said the reduction in hours caused all the men on her crew to quit and commute long distances in search of more work. “They all left to find more hours,” Hermosillo said.

Wendy Rosales, another farmworker in Colusa County, said she and her partner used to work side by side in the fields. They worked a lot each summer, saving up to get through slow stretches in the winter, with enough left over for an occasional vacation.

“It was good,” said Rosales, who also has three children. “We picked up the kids together. We did the cooking and cleaning together.”

But when they both lost hours, it stretched their finances. Their grocery bags got lighter and their family outings became less frequent, Rosales said. In January, her partner took a welding job an hour away in Yuba City.

Jack Cunningham, executive director of the Colusa County Chamber of Commerce, said that while the chamber lacked data to differentiate spending by farmworker households, he thought the widespread loss of income had “very likely” impacted revenue for restaurants and retailers in the rural county.

Market pressure

Farmers said they would like to offer overtime to their workers, but paying large amounts would eliminate their profitability.

Mark Hall, who grows table grapes in Kern County, said he pays his two year-round employees some overtime. But he said he can’t afford it for the 150 contract laborers he hires to prune vines, thin grape clusters and harvest fruit.

“The money is just not there to do that,” Hall said.

Because farmers sell perishable goods in a global marketplace, they typically lack the bargaining power to pass along production cost increases to their buyers, according to Bryan Little, senior director of policy advocacy for the California Farm Bureau and chief operating officer of the affiliated Farm Employers Labor Service.

With labor being a major expense, “employers are naturally going to look for ways to control that cost,” Little said.

During the past couple decades, rising labor costs have pushed many California farmers to change which crops they grow or go out of business altogether as production of some fruits and vegetables increasingly shifts to places where labor is cheaper.

Legislation

To address the effects of the overtime law, lawmakers have proposed using public funds to pay for farmworker overtime. Senate Bill 921, coauthored by state Sen. Shannon Grove, R-Bakersfield, and state Sen. Melissa Hurtado, D-Sanger, would create a tax credit to offset the cost to farmers of paying overtime premiums.

Hill, the UC Berkeley researcher, estimated the tax credit could cost California $336 million to $679 million per year. She added that all the money would go into employee paychecks. If used, it could amount to as much as a 75% increase in earnings for individual workers and send hundreds of millions of dollars to some of California’s lowest-income residents.  

“It would be hugely beneficial for farmworkers who want those extra hours and want to earn more money,” Hill said.

Still, Little said the proposed tax credit could face an uphill battle. In addition to constraints in the state budget, it is opposed by labor unions and has so far won public support from a single elected Democrat.

Calling attention to the overtime law’s negative impacts on farmworkers “is not a popular thing to do as a Democrat,” Hurtado said. But she said she felt compelled to act after hearing from farmworkers in her district. 

“I’ve had individuals come up to me and tell me that it’s killing them,” she said. “This is a big issue.”

Last month, with work picking up on farms in the Sacramento Valley, Aceves Cortés said her days with shifts in both the fields and the restaurant were coming more often.

“It’s difficult, but I have to take advantage of these days,” she said. “Tomorrow, it’ll be the same routine as yesterday.”

Some quotes in this story were translated from Spanish. Caleb Hampton is an editor at Ag Alert. He can be reached at champton@cfbf.com. Ag Alert staff writer Manola Secaira contributed reporting.