Washington state growers are enduring their first planting season without an overtime exemption. OT pay is scheduled to be phased into anything over 40 hours over the next few years, but it will not be easy for those in agriculture.
According to Pam Lewison with the Washington Policy Center Initiative on Ag, “There’s a lot of question marks on that 40-hour mark because we have a really labor-intensive specialty crop market here in Washington, and 40 hours is challenging for a lot of the things that we grow here, a lot of the things that we are recognized for on a national and global scale. And that’s something that’s going to take time for growers to figure out if they’re even able to do, to be honest.”
She says that last legislative session, there was an attempt to give employers a seasonal exemption, but that bill failed to move.
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