Events

Farm Labor Issues in the 2020s - Summary Report

California’s farm labor market is changing in response to rising labor costs at a time when production elsewhere in the US and abroad prevents grower prices from rising:   

Labor markets involve workers giving control over some of their time to employers in exchange for wages. California’s farm labor market is relatively stable: on average, some 425,000 farm workers are employed, peaking at almost 500,000 in summer and slipping to 350,000 in winter, but 850,000 unique workers are employed for wages on the state’s farms each year. These mostly Mexican-born workers are aging, and their US-educated children shun seasonal farm work, so the farm workers of 2030 and beyond are growing up today somewhere outside the US. A major policy issue is how the admission and employment of farm guest workers should be regulated.

Farming, farm workers, and farm labor markets are changing:

Fewer and larger suppliers of particular commodities, a mix of older unauthorized and younger legal farm workers, and the growing role of FLCs make the farm labor market complex and limit accountability. Some believe that produce buyers could transform the farm labor market by requiring suppliers of fresh produce to vet growers for compliance with food safety, farm labor, and other laws and regulations; growers counter that buyers are not willing to pay prices high enough to ensure compliance throughout the supply chain. NGOs such as EFI, Fairtrade, and FFP certify farm employers who are in compliance with their labor standards so that others in the supply chain can easily identify “good employers.”

The major dynamic forces increasing farm labor costs is (1) the shrinking supply of settled US workers and stable demand, (2) the end of agricultural exemptions from labor laws, and (3) special regulations governing H-2A workers and MSFWs that increase costs. The three major responses to rising farm labor costs are MMI: mechanization, migrants, and imports:

The response to rising labor costs varies by commodity, reflecting supplier structure, commodity profitability, and technology, trade, and policy factors. Large and well-capitalized table grape suppliers are adopting mechanical aids and increasing production in lower-wage countries, while the acreage of US melons and open-field tomatoes is shrinking. California has an ideal coastal climate and a well-developed infrastructure to produce lettuces and strawberries, encouraging producers of these commodities to rely on H-2A workers and mechanical aids until full mechanization.

Employment and Workers

An average 1.3 million workers are employed by the 112,000 US agricultural establishments (NAICS 11) registered with state UI agencies; average employment is a measure of full-time equivalent jobs, so that three workers who are each employed for four months create one FTE job. California has 17,000 agricultural establishments and an average agricultural employment of 420,000, a third of the US total. The number of agricultural establishments and average agricultural employment have been stable over the past decade.

The number of unique farm workers exceeds average employment due to seasonality and turnover. No one knows how many people are employed for wages in US agriculture each year, but estimates center on 2.5 million, suggesting almost two unique workers for each year-round or average farm job.

About 80 percent of these 2.5 million hired farm workers are employed on crop farms. These crop workers can be divided into three major groups:

Average hourly farm earnings, which were about half of the earnings of nonfarm production workers for most of the past half century, are rising faster than nonfarm earnings and closing the farm-nonfarm earnings gap. The average hourly earnings of crop and livestock workers were $15 in 2020, 60 percent of the $25 nonfarm average and rising. This narrowing farm-nonfarm earnings gap is prompting MMI responses.

Some producers of blueberries and raisin grapes that face competition from imports are embracing mechanization, while others continue with hand-harvesting until they retire or sell their land. Many producers of table grapes and strawberries have adopted mechanical aids to make hand workers more productive. Producers of apples and other commodities that face little import competition such as leafy greens are hiring more H-2A migrants while they wait for viable labor-saving machines. Producers of commodities that face rising import competition, and where labor-saving machines are not being developed, are hiring more H-2As even as US production of asparagus, open-field tomatoes, and melons shrinks.

The 2020s could mark a new era in farm labor similar to the 1960s, a decade notable for rapid technological change exemplified by the mechanization of the processing tomato harvest and labor activism that led to a table grape boycott and UFW contracts with grape growers. During the 1960s, the production of most fresh fruits and vegetables was less concentrated, there was less import competition, and marketing orders regulated the supply of some commodities such as citrus and raisins to the fresh market to keep grower prices high. Today’s concentration among produce suppliers and buyers, new concerns for equity and sustainability, and a far more regulated farm labor market and food safety system mean that buyer pressure on suppliers can have significant impacts on farm employers and farm workers.

MMI Responses

The responses to rising farm labor costs include:
•    Machines and aids. Rising farm labor costs and the availability of venture capital have spawned tech startups that aim to spread labor-saving machines from precision planting and weeding to harvesting. Improvements in cameras that detect ripe fruit and grippers that detach individual fruits promise to make robots competitive with hand workers when farm labor costs reach $30 to $35 an hour, about today’s cost of wages and benefits in manufacturing.

Mechanical aids such as conveyor belts that travel slowly in front of hand workers make workers who harvest lettuce and other leafy greens as well as berries make hand workers more productive, raising the bar for full mechanization. Autonomous robots can carry harvested table grapes or flats of berries from individual pickers to packing stations or collection points, increasing hand worker productivity even when worker productivity varies.

The fresh produce industry is poised to evolve into fewer and larger grower-shippers in apples, some tree fruits, and leafy greens, the dominance of marketers in berries, table grapes, and other commodities that rely on both private and publicly developed plant varieties, and supermarket and food service buyers that engage unevenly with their suppliers on labor issues. If concern about sustainability is a guide for action on farm labor, buyers may react to national and international events with pledges and plans that are adopted and enforced unevenly.

Mechanization

Rising farm labor costs and the availability of venture capital have spawned tech startups that aim to spread labor-saving machines from precision planting and weeding to harvesting. Robots can harvest individual fruits and vegetables by positioning themselves near the tree or plant, picking the desired fruit or vegetable, and transporting it to a bin or other storage device.  The major challenge for robotic harvesters is picking, while robotic harvest-aids focus on positioning and transporting to make hand pickers more productive.

Building a cost-effective harvesting robot is hard because of the need to consider three factors:

There are trade offs between picking efficiency and speed, since a robot that checks a tree or plant thoroughly for marketable produce is likely to be slow. Robots must be efficient and fast because they must:

Achieving 99% efficiency in each of these steps would mean that the robot is 86% efficient, or less than human pickers. Adding more cameras and arms can increase picking speeds, but increasing picking efficiency is the Holy Grail of robot harvest developers.

Instead of full mechanization, mechanical aids such as conveyor belts that travel slowly in front of hand workers can increase hand worker productivity by reducing the time workers spend taking full trays or bags to collection and checking stations. The problem with conveyor belts is that the workers who follow the machine must be of similar productivity. Leafy greens producers use conveyor belts in front of crews of 25 to 40 lettuce or broccoli harvesters of similar productivity, and crew members are encouraged to work fast by a bonus system that offers an extra payment divided among the crew for surpassing a daily target level of production.

Aids and individual piece rate wage systems pose more challenges. Conveyor belts in front of 10 to 20 strawberry pickers cost $100,000 and may move too slow for fast pickers and too fast for slow pickers. Smaller belts for smaller crews cost less, but may not increase worker productivity enough to justify their cost.

One solution to diverse workers and individual piece rates is robots that provide personalized service. FRAIL-BOTS (Fragile cRop hArvest-aiding mobiLe roBOTS) for strawberry pickers rely on workers having picking carts with scales and GPS to communicate with autonomous robots that know when to arrive to pick up a full tray, deliver an empty tray, and credit the worker with $2.50 to $3.00 for each tray picked. Similar devices can move heavier commodities, including bins of table grapes, from workers to packers who pack them.

Mechanical aids can also increase the productivity of hand workers who harvest tree fruit. Using cameras to locate trees and fruit, intelligent platforms can move and position hand pickers so that they can pick faster. However, WA apple growers report difficulty assembling crews of 4 to 8 US workers who are willing to share the piece rate wage of about $30 to pick a bin of apples, even though platforms enable workers to pick safer and faster. H-2A workers, who must follow employer instructions to keep their US jobs, are more likely to accept harvest work on platforms.

Implementing mechanical and robotic aids raises several questions:

Conveyor belts in strawberries illustrate the interaction of these factors. Some growers reduced the piece rate significantly, leading to worker protests and helping to explain why belts are more widely used in Ventura than in Monterey county.

Migrants

The H-2A program allows farm employers to be certified by DOL to fill seasonal farm jobs with H-2A migrant guest workers if they are unable to recruit sufficient US workers at the Adverse Effect Wage Rate (AEWR). Fewer than 100,000 jobs a year were certified until 2013. Since then, the number of jobs certified to be filled by H-2A workers almost quadrupled to 378,000 in FY23, including almost 40,000 in California.

About 80 percent of DOL job certifications become H-2A workers; the gap between jobs and workers is due to some employers not following through and some H-2A workers filling two US farm jobs. H-2A workers are in the US an average six months, making the 300,000+ H-2A workers equivalent to over 150,000 full-time equivalent (FTE) workers, a sixth of the 1.1 million average employment on US crop farms.

H-2A workers are concentrated in particular states, commodities, and types of employers. Over half of H-2A jobs are in five states led by Florida, two-thirds are in fruits and vegetables, and almost half are with farm labor contractors. Most H-2A workers perform harvesting tasks, although many also perform non-harvest tasks such as pruning, weeding, thinning, and packing.

In California, the number of H-2A job certifications decreased in FY23. The number of employer applications continued to increase to over 900, but fewer workers were requested per job order, mostly due to the large FLCs who account for most California H-2A job certifications requesting fewer in FY23.

There are relatively few studies of H-2A workers, since they are not included in the NAWS and not identified in household surveys that often miss group quarters, although farm labor stakeholders agree that H-2A workers should be included in the NAWS. However, limited surveys find that the young Mexican men who dominate the H-2A workforce would like (1) short vacations within their typical six month contracts to return to Mexico at the worker’s expense to visit family, (2) training in equipment operation and opportunities to learn English, and more amenities in their US housing.

Congress is unlikely to approve the Farm Workforce Modernization Act (FWMA) or other significant legislation affecting the H-2A program in 2024. Instead, the major action affecting H-2As in 2024 is likely to be in federal courts, where farm employers are trying to roll back DOL regulations that set AEWRs by job title and increase protections for H-2A workers.

The FWMA would allow unauthorized farm workers and their family members who are in the US to become temporary legal residents with the right to work in the US. By continuing to do some farm work for the next four to eight years, these temporary legal residents known as Certified Agricultural Workers could become immigrants, and so could members of their families who are in the US. If enacted, the FWMA could legalize some 850,000 unauthorized farm workers and 1.5 million dependents.

The FWMA would make it easier for farmers to employ H-2A workers by freezing the AEWR and opening year-round farm jobs to H-2A workers, as in dairies. Annual increases in the AEWR would be limited while USDA and DOL study the need for an AEWR to protect US farm workers from any adverse effects due to H-2A workers. The FWMA was approved by the House in 2019 and 2021, but not taken up by the Senate, prompting a group of 75 Congressional representatives to call for an AEWR freeze in January 2024.

Until 2023, there was one AEWR per state based on the earnings of field and livestock workers as reported by farm employers to USDA’s Farm Labor Survey. DOL in 2023 introduced a more complex structure of AEWRs. Farm employers specify the Standard Occupational Code of the job, such as farmworkers and laborers, crop, nursery and greenhouse workers (45-2092) or agricultural equipment operators (45-2091). If the USDA FLS has a wage for this SOC, the FLS wage for the previous year becomes the AEWR for the current year.

If the FLS does not have a wage for “nonfarm job titles” such as heavy truck drivers (SOC 53-3032) who move harvested crops over public roads to processing or storage facilities or construction laborers (SOC 47-2061) who build structures and facilities on farms, DOL sets the AEWR using DOL’s Occupational Employment and Wage Survey. In many cases, the OEWS wage for “nonfarm jobs” is double the AEWR that must be paid.

H-2A employers criticize AEWRs for several reasons. First, they say that the USDA FLS should not be used to set a minimum wage for guest workers. Second, they emphasize that only about 7,000 farmers respond to the FLS, which means that the AEWR can change by 10 to 20 percent from one year to the next in some farm labor regions, making it hard to plan. Third, farm employers question whether an AEWR is necessary to protect H-2A and US workers. Employers have petitioned DOL to do studies and hold hearings to determine if the presence of H-2A workers adversely affects US workers. Only if the answer is yes, they argue, should DOL set an AEWR.

The second H-2A issue is protections for H-2A and US farm workers. There are three major checks on US employers:

The H-2A regulatory structure is criticized by farm employers as too cumbersome and by worker advocates as insufficient to protect US and H-2A workers. Farmers have three major complaints:

Worker advocates believe that H-2A workers are inherently vulnerable to exploitation, and that many migrants pay unlawful recruitment fees abroad. Once in the US, H-2A workers aim to please their employer to keep their jobs and be invited to return next year, making them reluctant to complain even if they know that their employers are failing to adhere to the job offer and H-2A regulations.

Does the AEWR pull up or depress the wages of US farm workers? The production of many commodities is concentrated in a few areas, where the presence of H-2A workers can make the AEWR the de facto minimum wage. Most US farm workers know their state’s minimum wage and the AEWR, and most expect all farm employers to offer the higher AEWR, a supply-side effect that pushes up farm wages. On the demand side, if the AEWR rises significantly, US farm employers may be willing to pay US workers more to avoid incurring the extra costs of housing and transporting H-2A workers.

Models that use data from the NAWS estimate that a 10 percent increase in the AEWR increases the wages of US workers by 3 percent, and 5 percent in the top-5 H-2A states, with the largest gains for the US farm workers with the most education. Since a rising AEWR increases wages for US farm workers who are not employed on farms with H-2A workers, freezing the AEWR would reduce wage growth for US farm workers by about $500 million a year. The US farm wage bill is about $50 billion, with perhaps 10 percent going to H-2A workers.

Trade

The US imports 60 percent of the fresh fruit and 40 percent of the fresh vegetables available to US residents, and Mexico supplies half of US fresh fruit imports and two-thirds of US fresh vegetable imports. The real or inflation-adjusted value of Mexican horticultural exports to the US quadrupled from less than $4 billion to almost $18 billion between 2000 and 2021. Mexico has modern farms that adhere to US food safety and other regulations and produce fruits and vegetables almost exclusively for Americans, which means that perhaps 750,000 Mexican farm workers are employed on farms that export to the US.

Horticultural commodities are in Chapters 06, 07, and 08 of the Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System (HS): 6 for nursery crops, 7 for vegetables, and 8 for fruits and nuts. In 2022, the US exported about $18 billion worth of HS 6-7-8 crops led by $8 billion worth of tree nuts, and imported $40 billion of HS 6-7-8 crops led by $3 billion each of avocados and tomatoes, $2 billion each of bananas, table grapes, and peppers, and $1 billion each of strawberries, raspberries, and cucumbers.

The US horticultural trade deficit of about $20 billion is due to rising imports of fresh fruits and vegetables, especially berries, despite significant US exports of tree nuts, apples, and other commodities.

Imported fruits and vegetables ensure that Americans have fresh produce available year-round, increasing per capita consumption. As farms in lower-wage countries improve their productivity, the share of imports among the fruits and vegetables available to Americans is likely to increase further. Almost all tropical fruit such as bananas are imported, as are 90 percent of the avocados, two-thirds of the blueberries and raspberries, and a third of the table grapes. Similarly, 90 percent of fresh asparagus and cucumbers, and two-thirds of the tomatoes and bell peppers, are imported.

Will rising US imports of fresh fruit and vegetables complement or substitute for US production? The arguments for a slowing growth of US fresh fruit and vegetable imports include:

The arguments for rising fresh fruit and vegetable imports that substitute for US production include:

US fresh fruit and vegetable imports are likely to continue to increase faster than exports. Ever-improving farming systems and infrastructure abroad may lead to more trade disputes that pit US-only producers who supply items only seasonally, especially in the southeastern states, against US suppliers who produce in the US and abroad and are allied with US buyers who seek high-quality and affordable produce year round.

Overtime and Housing

The Fair Labor Standards Act excluded farm workers from federal minimum and overtime wage protections. Farm workers began to be covered under federal minimum wage laws in 1967, but the federal FLSA continues to exclude farm workers from overtime pay.

AB 1066 phased in 8/40 overtime for California farm workers beginning in 2019, and employers with 25 or more employees have paid overtime on an 8/40 basis since 2022. Supporters of AB 1066 made an equity argument: farm workers should be treated like other workers.  Opponents countered that many farm workers are employed seasonally and want to maximize their hours of work when work is available. They predicted that many employers would reduce employee hours of work rather than pay overtime wages.

There were no studies of the likely effects of AB 1066 on worker hours and earnings before enactment in 2016 and implementation in 2019, but three types of workers were expected to be most affected: dairy and other animal workers, equipment operators, and irrigators.

What happened? The USDA Farm Labor Survey found that the average weekly hours of directly hired California workers fell relative to the average weekly hours of all US directly hired workers. In 2016, California’s directly hired farm workers averaged 2.7 more hours a week than all US farm workers. California employers reported that hours per week fell to +1.9 more than the US average in 2019, +0.1 hours in 2021, and -1 hour in 2023, meaning that directly hired California farm workers averaged an hour less per week than all US farm workers.

The NAWS interviews 500 to 600 California farm workers a year. Workers reported fewer hours in the previous week in 2019 and 2020 than in 2018. A quarter of the workers interviewed in 2019-20 reported working 46 to 50 hours, another quarter 36 to 40 hours, and about an eighth each reported 41 to 45 and 51 to 55 hours.

An analysis using NAWS data concluded that SB 1066 led to fewer hours and lower weekly earnings, especially for workers who had been employed for more than 50 hours a week. NAWS data suggest that employers tried to avoid paying overtime by limiting most workers to 40 hours a week, which meant lower weekly earnings for workers who had been employed for longer hours.

An analysis based on American Community Survey data drawn from interviews conducted with workers in their homes also found falling hours of work for California farm workers. ACS Q40 asks how many weeks the respondent worked in the previous 12 months, Q41 asks how many hours per week the respondent usually worked when they were employed, and ACS Q42 asks for the name and type of employer so that the ACS can impute the industry or NAICS code of the employer where the respondent worked the most hours and the respondent’s occupation and duties. Q43 asks for the respondent’s income over the past 12 months, including income from wages and salaries, investments, and public assistance.

The ACS analysis found that the usual weekly hours of California farm workers fell from 42.5 in 2018 to 40.5 in 2021 and to 39.6 in 2022, and the share of farm workers employed more than 40 hours a week shrank. However, the ACS data show that nominal farm worker earnings rose in lockstep with minimum wage increases, and earnings rose especially rapidly between 2021 and 2022.

The most comprehensive data on farm worker earnings are from the employment and earnings data reported by farm employers when paying UI taxes to EDD. The UI data do not include hours worked. Instead, they count all hired workers on the payroll for the pay period that includes the 12th of the month and all earnings paid to all workers each quarter.

EDD can extract the earnings data of all California workers who were employed during other payroll periods and assign them to the NAICS or commodity of the employer where the worker had his/her highest earnings. The result is a census of primary farm workers whose highest earnings were with California farm employers (NAICS 11), a crop employer, a strawberry employer, or a dairy employer.

EDD data find an average 724,500 primary farm workers between 2018 and 2021, with a drop of one percent between 2018 and 2021. The number of primary crop workers fell four percent during these years, the number of primary vegetable workers fell 10 percent, and the number of primary grape workers fell 30 percent. The number of primary animal workers fell two percent, while the number of primary crop support workers rose by two percent to 333,000, meaning that 46 percent of all primary farm workers had their highest earning job with a FLC.

The EDD data permit analysis of changes in average annual earnings by commodity or NAICS of the employer. Average annual earnings for primary crop workers rose from 2018 to 2020, but fell sharply between 2020 and 2021, down 15 to 20 percent in most commodities. The drop in the average annual earnings of primary farm workers may reflect the demand for workers falling faster than supply during covid and employers reducing hours offered to avoid paying overtime wages.

Lack of affordable housing is a perennial issue for farm workers, many of whom have more people per household in coastal counties with very high housing costs; the HUD fair market rent for a two-bedroom unit in Salinas is $2,900, and in Oxnard $2,400. Most farm workers rent housing, and interviews with farm workers suggest that some pay 40 to 50 percent of their earnings in rent and that many live in overcrowded housing, defined as more than one person per room.

The state operates 24 migrant housing centers with 1,885 units that house about 7,000 farm worker families whose usual residence is at least 50 miles from the center, and charge less than $400 a month for a unit that may have three bedrooms and house 5 or more people. Most migrant housing centers were constructed in the 1960s and 1970s, when follow-the-crop family migration was more common. Today, few farm worker families migrate to fill seasonal farm jobs, raising the question of whether center residents should be permitted to live in the centers year-round.

Housing for poor residents is a challenge throughout California, and the migrant centers highlight a farm worker housing trade off. Some center residents continue to migrate to the centers because their seniority guarantees them six or more months of low-cost housing with access to health, education, and other services.  These center residents may not fit the migrant stereotype, including those with nonfarm jobs in packing sheds or supervisors and crew leaders, and some may own a home in Texas or Mexico and come to California for higher wages and UI benefits when laid off.

Perspective

The California farm labor market appears to be at another of its periodic crossroads:

Farm workers were excluded from most New Deal labor and social welfare protections under “ag exceptionalism,” the theory that farming is done mostly by farmers and their families, making factory-style labor laws are inappropriate. Agricultural labor exclusions are gradually disappearing at the federal level, and have been almost ended in California, where farm workers in some cases have more rights under state laws than other private sector workers.

Employers and Workers

Farm worker rights are often more theoretical than real because of power imbalances between farm employers and farm workers. Employers are often rooted in the community, while workers are often newcomers to the US. The dominant mode of farm employment in California, relying on a nonfarm business to bring workers to farms, means that farm workers typically interact with supervisors who are familiar with the circumstances from which they come. Such workers are willing to accept conditions that may violate labor laws to earn wages that are 10x higher than in their area of origin.

Private programs can certify “good” FLCs to allow farm employers and others in the fresh produce supply chain to identify compliant providers of seasonal workers. Such certifications face a trade off. On a spectrum from (1) relying on labor enforcement agencies to (2) having active union or other labor-management interactions, Fairtrade, FFP, EFI and other private certifications are in-between. They require farm employers to establish systems to achieve compliance with private protocols, conduct audits to certify compliance, and create committees of employees and supervisors to ensure continued compliance.

Private compliance programs are promising but limited. Relatively few farms are certified, and many programs do not certify FLCs. Most programs are funded by foundation grants rather than farm-paid fees, and thus are not sustainable, and some do not certify the FLCs who may account for half of US farm worker employment by 2030. Finally, the effects of private compliance programs on worker productivity, turnover, and worker satisfaction are not yet clear.

Working in California agriculture to achieve upward mobility at home versus being a seasonal farm worker to achieve upward mobility in California explains many of the differences in perspective on farm labor. Complex H-2A regulations are rarely followed completely, yet few H-2A workers complain because they are earning money in California to achieve upward mobility in Mexico. Settled Mexican-born workers, on the other hand, may have intended to return but settled in California because of their unauthorized status and the presence of US-born and -educated children and grandchildren. These settled Mexican-born workers, who are three-fourths of seasonal farm workers, face the challenge of growing old in a high-cost state with limited personal resources and limited access to the social safety net.

The rising cost of seasonal farm labor is the dynamic that spurs MMI, mechanization, migrant guest workers, and imports. Selective harvesting robots are coming, making the question when plant breeding, farming systems, and improved cameras and grippers will replace hand workers. Until then, mechanical aids including individualized robots that serve pickers who work at different speeds and earn individual piece rates can raise hand-worker productivity.

Imports of fresh produce from modern farms and lower wages keep a cap on US grower prices for many fruits and vegetables. Starting from scratch in Mexico or Peru with state-of-the-art technologies and farming systems can allow Mexican tomatoes and Peruvian blueberries to enter the US at prices lower than US-produced commodities. The result of more labor-saving technologies and rising imports is likely to be ever fewer and larger US producers interacting with fewer and larger produce US buyers.

Slowing this march toward fewer and larger producers in the US or abroad requires consideration of trade offs. For example, including farm workers under labor laws that require overtime on an 8/40 basis, allow unions to be certified without secret ballot elections, and PAGA laws that permit private attorneys to sue employers for missed rest periods and short meal times, push deep-pocked growers to invest in alternatives to California farm workers.

Regulation

Farm employers have the most power in most workplaces that employ seasonal farm workers, while worker advocates have the most power in the California Legislature. The result of having a Legislature beholden to stakeholders who want to “do something” for farm workers is ever more protective state laws and regulations, many enacted without study or consideration of all their effects.

California’s 2016 law requiring 8/40 overtime pay is an example. All studies show that the hours worked by California farm workers decreased after overtime wages were required beginning in 2019, so that farm workers should have more time to be with their families or receive premium wages for long working hours. However, most studies suggest that worker earnings fell as farm employers tried to avoid paying overtime wages.

This means that some farm workers worked eight hours at one farm and four at another, resulting in an extra commute and more hours away from family. There may also be examples of creative bookkeeping by employers and complicit workers to avoid overtime wages in exchange for longer hours. However, most studies concur that 8/40 overtime so far is an example of good intentions gone awry in the sense that seasonal worker earnings fell rather than increased.

The state’s migrant housing centers for migrant families are another example of good intentions with unexpected results. When built 50 years ago, there were migrant families who followed the ripening crops from south to north. However, migrant families learned that their children suffered by switching schools frequently, so family follow-the-crop migration has practically disappeared. Meanwhile, the centers are filled by families with the right-to-return who pay less than $400 in rent in areas where two-bedroom apartments can cost $2,000 or more.    

There is insufficient low-cost housing throughout California, raising the question of who should get access to the limited supplies of high-quality and low-cost migrant family housing. The California Legislature is considering a bill that would permit the centers to be open year-round, effectively converting housing once intended for follow-the-crop migrant families into low-cost public housing in agricultural areas.

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