Agricultural worker protection attorney

All employees in California – including agricultural workers – are protected by certain rights under California’s labor laws, which include the right to minimum wages, meal and rest breaks and heat recovery breaks. There are more than 70,000 farms statewide spanning nearly 25 million acres of land. But these workers, more than 400,000 of whom in California were considered essential to our economic and practical sustainability through the pandemic, remain vulnerable.

Recently, farmworkers in a San Joaquin County labor lawsuit were compensated for rest breaks that were not paid. However, the California appellate court would not allow them recovery under two separate statutes. Continue Reading ›

Following a recent Southern California labor strike of nearly 2,000 subcontracted orange pickers from one of the largest fruit companies in the U.S., Los Angeles wage and hour attorneys are looking even more closely at this industry, wherein an increasingly substantial number of workers are employed by third-party labor contractors, rather than the farm companies themselves. As far as agricultural workers go, those in California enjoy some of the best labor law protections in the country. However, workers employed by these third-party firms are often exempted from some of the required protections they’d otherwise enjoy under state law, including overtime pay.

Much of it comes down to power disparities, the wink-and-nod regulators give to the companies that fulfill demand for undocumented workers and loopholes many farms have long exploited.

This most recent strike began after one of the state’s top citrus producers slashed the price-per-bin pay on mandarins harvested. Previously, they were primarily focused on so-called “clementines,” which are smaller, but then shifted more harvest work to the larger mandarins. The rate-per-bin was dropped from $53 to $48. The company told The Los Angeles Times this was due to a “seasonal shift,” but a farm union spokesman stated employees had always been paid the same per-bin rate, regardless of the variety they were picking. Continue Reading ›

Articles Tagged with Agricultural worker protection attorney

Examining California Rest Break Laws for Agricultural Workers

California Farm Worker Protections Among the Best, Still Inadequate