Farmworkers should get OT, Wash. state’s high court rules

The ruling applies only to the dairy industry. Above, dairy cows in Sunnyside, Washington.

SEATTLE — A divided Washington Supreme Court ruled this week that the state’s dairy workers are entitled to overtime pay if they work more than 40 hours a week, a decision expected to apply to the rest of the agriculture industry.

For the past 60 years, state law — like federal law — has exemptedfarmworkers from classes of workers who are entitled to overtime pay, but in a 5-4 ruling the court found thatunconstitutional. The majority said the Washington state Constitution grants workers in dangerous industries a fundamental right to health and safety protections, including overtime, which is intended to discourage employers from forcing employees to work excessive hours.

The ruling applied only to the dairy industry, but its reasoning covers all of the 200,000-plus farmworkers in the state’s $10.6 billion agriculture industry, said Lori Isley, an attorney with the nonprofitColumbiaLegal Services who represented the dairyworkers.

“Since 1983, the Washington Supreme Court has recognized that all farm work is very dangerous work, so it’s very easy to see how this will extend to all farmworkers,” Isley said. “We are so happy to see the law in our state moving forward in this direction.”

The decision makes Washington the first state to grant farmworkers overtime protections through the courts.

California is phasing in some overtime protections, while New York this year began requiring overtime pay when farmworkers work more than 60 hours in a week. Maryland and Minnesota also offer overtime protections to farmworkers.

The ruling could provide a template for extending overtime in other states, said Charlotte Garden, a Seattle University Law School professor who worked on a friend-of-thecourt brief in the case.

“(President) Trump’s remake of the federal judiciary means that federal courts are likely to be hostile to workers for the foreseeable future,” she wrote in an instant message. “That means that in many states, workers and their advocates are going to be looking to state courts to vindicate their rights. The lawin this case is obviously WA-specific, but it could still inspire new litigation strategies both inside and outsideWA.”

Dairies and other agriculture industry groups warned the ruling will meanvastly increased labor costs and that it could prompt more to turn to robotics, especially in the dairy industry. They can’t simply pass on higher costs to consumers because they often compete in national or global markets for their products, they argued.

Washington’s farms already have some of the nation’s highest labor costs, thanks in part to its high minimum wage and to the nature of the crops grown, including fruit and hops, which require intensive hand-picking.

The industry warned that applying overtime protections would leave farms with three options: limiting their harvest and leaving crops to rot, absorbing the extra labor costs, or hiring additionalworkers to avoid incurring overtime expenses.