Catherwood LibraryILR School

Employees are entitled to overtime pay if they work more than forty hours a week, however, farmworkers are exempt from this federal labor law. Recently, some states have been making strides to address this and grant farm workers with overtime rights. For instance, in New York, it has been announced that a forty-hour threshold will be phased in over the course of the next decade, which will match California's existing forty-hour limit for farm workers. There are some labor movement advocates who fear these policies will not have the intended positive effects though. Concerns have been expressed that these limitations will ultimately reduce farm workers' hours and pay as employers hire more workers instead of paying overtime to existing ones.