“This bill cor­rects 78 years of dis­crim­i­na­tion, not just in the state but in the coun­try,” says Juan Gar­cia, an inter­nal coor­di­na­tor with the Unit­ed Farm Work­ers (UFW). ​“Most of the peo­ple that I’ve talked to here in Sono­ma that have worked 30, some­times 40 years — they’ve been wait­ing for some­thing like this.”

The leg­is­la­tion, known as AB 1066, was signed into law this week by Gov. Jer­ry Brown and will even­tu­al­ly result in time-and-a-half pay for farm­work­ers who work more than eight hours a day or 40 hours a week.

Cal­i­for­nia just approved the strongest over­time pay leg­is­la­tion in the nation for farm­work­ers, long exempt from over­time stan­dards man­dat­ed for most oth­er occupations.

Nation­wide, almost all farm­work­ers are exempt from over­time thresh­olds thanks to agri­cul­tur­al work­er exemp­tions in the Fair Labor Stan­dards Act of 1938. The law exclud­ed farm­work­ers in order to appease Dix­ie­crat lead­ers who object­ed to min­i­mum wage and over­time fed­er­al stan­dards for the most­ly black farm­work­ers of the time.

While Cal­i­for­nia even­tu­al­ly estab­lished over­time pay in 1976 for farm­work­ers who work more than 10 hours a day or 60 hours a week, AB 1066 author Assem­bly­woman Lore­na Gon­za­lez (D‑San Diego) says the exist­ing pro­tec­tions were not enough.

“Even though we’ve brought them up fur­ther in Cal­i­for­nia than oth­er states have, they still weren’t on equal foot­ing and were viewed dif­fer­ent­ly under labor laws, so I thought it was extreme­ly impor­tant (to intro­duce AB 1066) because these are some of the hard­est work­ing folks in Cal­i­for­nia, under some of the hard­est con­di­tions,” Gon­za­lez tells In These Times.

Under AB 1066, the state will reduce the over­time thresh­old by half an hour every year, start­ing in 2019, until it reach­es the 8 hours a day or 40 hours a week stan­dard in 2022. AB 1066 affects the rough­ly 800,000 farm­work­ers in Cal­i­for­nia, one-third of all agri­cul­tur­al labor­ers in the coun­try accord­ing to 2014 esti­mates by Philip Mar­tin, pro­fes­sor of agri­cul­tur­al eco­nom­ics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Davis. These work­ers earn, on aver­age, between $16,500 and $19,000 a year, accord­ing to Mar­tin and oth­er researchers at UC Davis. When employed by farm labor con­trac­tors, instead of grow­ers direct­ly, farm­work­ers, on aver­age, earn even less — an esti­mat­ed $12,719 per year. The Cal­i­for­nia Research Bureau reports that approx­i­mate­ly 30 per­cent of Cal­i­for­nia house­holds with farm labor­er incomes are below the pover­ty line.

More­over, the share of undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers per­form­ing farm labor in the state is so high (Martin’s 2014 esti­mates put it at 67 per­cent), that enforce­ment of over­time pay takes an addi­tion­al ​“bur­den” accord­ing Kent Wong, direc­tor the Labor Cen­ter at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Los Angeles.

“The unfor­tu­nate real­i­ty is that in the research that we have con­duct­ed, with regards to wage theft, it is very com­mon for employ­ers of undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grant work­ers to take advan­tage of these work­ers, giv­en their pre­car­i­ous sta­tus, and to not respect the law,” Wong tells In These Times.

In the days lead­ing up to AB 1066’s pas­sage, UFW, the bill’s co-spon­sor, orga­nized emo­tion­al demon­stra­tions by farm­work­ers in Sacra­men­to, the meet­ing place of the state legislature.

“They were the only voice, orga­nized voice, for farm­work­ers in the state,” says Gon­za­lez. ​“They are the front lines, they work with these work­ers every sin­gle day, they orga­nize these work­ers, they empow­er them, and they were able to bring a real face to the discussion.”

Gov. Brown’s sig­na­ture comes six years after his Repub­li­can pre­de­ces­sor, Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger, vetoed a sim­i­lar bill. Although Brown’s first tenure as Cal­i­for­nia gov­er­nor between 1975 and 1983 had seen him enact first-in-the-nation leg­is­la­tion that insti­tu­tion­al­ized col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing rules for agri­cul­tur­al work­ers, since return­ing as gov­er­nor in 2011, Brown has vetoed sev­er­al pieces of leg­is­la­tion that would have helped strength­en the UFW’s abil­i­ty to orga­nize work­ers. In 2011, he vetoed a bill allow­ing the state’s Agri­cul­ture Labor Rela­tions Board to imple­ment union con­tracts after manda­to­ry medi­a­tion between the union and grow­ers. In 2014, Brown vetoed card-check leg­is­la­tion for farm­work­ers that would have made orga­niz­ing with­out an elec­tion far easier.

U.S. Sec­re­tary of Labor Thomas Perez, cel­e­brat­ed Gov. Brown’s sig­na­ture on AB 1066, as well as the exten­sion of expir­ing over­time pro­vi­sions for nan­nies and home­care work­ers who more than nine hours a day, say­ing in a state­ment, ​“Peo­ple who work on farms and in our homes are some of America’s most vul­ner­a­ble work­ers. We all depend on their work to feed and care for our fam­i­lies, but far too often they can’t afford to put food on their own din­ner tables.”

Farm man­age­ment, how­ev­er, seemed to be uni­ver­sal­ly opposed. Tom Nas­sif, leader of a region­al farm man­age­ment asso­ci­a­tion called West­ern Grow­ers, aired the most com­mon argu­ment against AB 1066 — reduced farm­work­er hours — in a recent­ly released state­ment.

“The Gov­er­nor has set in motion a chain of events that will cause work­ers in our fields to lose wages,” Nas­sif says. ​“Cal­i­for­nia farm­ers will have no choice but to avoid even high­er costs of pro­duc­tion and they will uti­lize a num­ber of strate­gies, includ­ing reduc­ing work shifts and pro­duc­tion of crops that require large num­bers of employees.”

When asked about such claims, Gon­za­lez says ​“we’ve heard that argu­ment time and time again,” adding that the argu­ments should be tak­en with ​“a grain of salt” as they are ​“talk­ing points of cor­po­rate America.”

“There is a lot of work to be done. There’s a short­age of farm­work­ers and so we feel pret­ty con­fi­dent that they’re going to con­tin­ue to have robust hours and, in fact, are just going to make more mon­ey,” says Gonzalez.