Dr. Alexandra Hill, Assistant Professor of Cooperative Extension, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, UC Berkeley, presented a talk titled:
California's New Overtime Law for Agricultural Workers: How did it impact workers?
Hired farm workers are among the most socioeconomically disadvantaged members of the U.S. agri-food system. Solving this systemic inequity has gained public and political traction in recent years, leading to a variety of policy changes. This paper presents the first causal evidence on the viability of one such policy—standards for overtime pay—as a mechanism to improve farm worker well-being. Overtime regulations are intended to improve worker welfare by mandating additional compensation for long working hours, yet there is relatively little evidence on their effects. This paper estimates the short-run effects of the agricultural overtime law enacted in California, the first of several states to implement such standards in recent years. Results suggest that as a result of the law, workers worked fewer hours on average and more worked hours at or just below the new overtime thresholds. Results also indicate that weekly earnings decreased in the years following the new overtime law, but these effects are challenging to disentangle from California's simultaneous minimum wage increases. Finally, I show evidence that the law did not appear to impact overall farm employment, but did increase the number of H-2A visa worker requests.
