“Farm workers were exempted when Congress voted in the 1930s to establish initial federal overtime rules, and the state did the same a few years later, prompting the bill’s author, Assemblyman Michael Allen, D-Santa Rosa, to declare, “75 years of waiting is long enough.”

Republicans, however, said that farmers would react to an overtime requirement by restricting the work hours of their seasonal employees or by increasing reliance on machinery, either of which would reduce workers’ incomes. “AB 1313 is self-defeating,” Assemblyman Curt Hagman, D-Chino Hills, said.” (Sacramento Bee, August 31, 2012). Read it here.