Today in Yaki­ma, Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee signed sev­er­al cru­cial­ly impor­tant work­er pro­tec­tion bills, one of which is intend­ed to help Wash­ing­to­ni­ans who work in the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor get the over­time pay they deserve. A few min­utes ago, Inslee’s bill action earned Wash­ing­ton State a con­grat­u­la­to­ry state­ment from none oth­er than the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, Joe Biden.

Here’s Biden’s state­ment in its entirety:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 11, 2021

State­ment by Pres­i­dent Joseph R. Biden, Jr. in Sup­port of Wash­ing­ton State’s Over­time Bill for Farm Workers

I con­grat­u­late the Wash­ing­ton State Leg­is­la­ture and Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee for sign­ing into law SB 5172, Washington’s Over­time Bill for Agri­cul­tur­al Work­ers, which will help more than 100,000 farm­work­ers secure the over­time pay they deserve.

Agri­cul­tur­al work­ers in Wash­ing­ton and across the coun­try have helped car­ry our nation through this pan­dem­ic — work­ing long hours, often at great per­son­al risk, to meet the needs of their com­mu­ni­ties and keep Amer­i­ca healthy and well-nourished.

These over­time pro­tec­tions will ensure that agri­cul­tur­al work­ers in Wash­ing­ton are paid for all of the vital work they do.

For too long — and owing in large part to uncon­scionable race-based exclu­sions put in place gen­er­a­tions ago — farm­work­ers have been denied some of the most fun­da­men­tal rights that work­ers in almost every oth­er sec­tor have long enjoyed, includ­ing the right to a forty-hour work week and over­time pay. I was proud to stand with farm­work­ers dur­ing the Oba­ma-Biden Admin­is­tra­tion, when Cal­i­for­nia passed the nation’s first farm­work­er over­time bill, and I am proud to stand with the farm­work­ers of Wash­ing­ton State today.

It is long past time that we put all of America’s farm­work­ers on an equal foot­ing with the rest of our nation­al work­force when it comes to their basic rights — and I urge Con­gress to pass HR 1177, the U.S. Cit­i­zen­ship Act, and the Farm Work­force Mod­ern­iza­tion Act, so that we can extend those rights to farm­work­ers in all fifty states.

It’s not often that the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States issues a state­ment weigh­ing in on the pas­sage of a law at the state lev­el. As Biden’s com­ments make clear, this issue is real­ly, real­ly impor­tant to him. And it’s great recog­ni­tion for the State of Wash­ing­ton, which has a his­to­ry of work­ing to strength­en its labor laws.

“The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has brought a new focus on the chal­lenges faced by front­line work­ers,” Inslee said in Yaki­ma Tuesday.

Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee signs a work­er pro­tec­tion bill in Yaki­ma, flanked by sev­er­al state law­mak­ers (Pho­to: Office of the Governor)

“They have kept our state mov­ing through one of our most chal­leng­ing times, work­ing through per­son­al hard­ship and challenges.”

“The bills I am sign­ing today rep­re­sent an acknowl­edge­ment of the lessons we’ve learned and offer hope for a stronger path forward.”

In addi­tion to SB 5172, the Gov­er­nor also signed:

• HB 1097, spon­sored by Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mike Sells [and request­ed by Gov­er­nor Inslee’s office], helps to address these con­cerns by pro­tect­ing work­ers who come for­ward about work­place hazards.
• SB 5115, prime spon­sored by Sen­a­tor Karen Keis­er, will help pro­tect high-risk work­ers, ensure that work­ers know when they’ve had a poten­tial expo­sure to an infec­tious dis­ease and make it eas­i­er for front­line work­ers to receive com­pen­sa­tion if they’re infect­ed on the job.
• SB 5190, spon­sored by Sen­a­tor Jeff Holy, address­es con­di­tions spe­cif­ic to health­care employ­ees to use unem­ploy­ment insur­ance ben­e­fits if they leave work to quar­an­tine dur­ing a pub­lic health emer­gency and have clear access to work­ers com­pen­sa­tion if they are exposed to the infec­tious or con­ta­gious dis­ease that is sub­ject to the a pub­lic health emergency.
• SB 5396, spon­sored by Sen­a­tor Liz Lovelett, incen­tivizes the devel­op­ment of new, com­mu­ni­ty-based farm­work­er hous­ing, pro­vid­ing more work­ers with safe and afford­able housing.

Thanks to Gov­er­nor Inslee’s staff for the above bill descriptions.

SB 5172 is bipar­ti­san leg­is­la­tion; its prime spon­sor is Repub­li­can State Sen­a­tor Cur­tis King, and all of its orig­i­nal cospon­sors were Republicans.

The bill earned the sup­port of all of the state’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic sen­a­tors on final pas­sage, along with most Republicans.

Only a few Repub­li­can sen­a­tors opposed it.

They were Mark Schoesler, Mike Pad­den, Shel­ley Short, Jeff Wil­son, Sharon Brown, and Per­ry Dozi­er. Schoesler, Brown, and Short were all cospon­sors of the orig­i­nal bill filed by Sen­a­tor King, but sad­ly, when the revised bill came up for floor action, they refused to sup­port the substitute.

In the House, the bill earned the sup­port of nine­ty-one of nine­ty-eight mem­bers. As in the Sen­ate, only Repub­li­cans were opposed, includ­ing mil­i­tant Repub­li­can Doug Suther­land, one of the most extreme mem­bers of the Legislature.

The bill employs a phased-in, incre­men­tal approach to over­time pay. It stip­u­lates that agri­cul­tur­al employ­ees are enti­tled to over­time in the fol­low­ing manner:

• begin­ning Jan­u­ary 1st, 2022, no agri­cul­tur­al employ­ee shall be employed for more than fifty-five hours in any one work­week unless the agri­cul­tur­al employ­ee receives one and one-half times the employ­ee’s reg­u­lar rate of pay for all hours worked over fifty-five in any one workweek;
• begin­ning Jan­u­ary 1st, 2023, no agri­cul­tur­al employ­ee shall be employed for more than forty-eight hours in any one work­week unless the agri­cul­tur­al employ­ee receives one and one-half times the employ­ee’s reg­u­lar rate of pay for all hours worked over forty-eight in any one workweek;
• and begin­ning Jan­u­ary 1st, 2024, no agri­cul­tur­al employ­ee shall be employed for more than forty hours in any one work­week unless the agri­cul­tur­al employ­ee receives one and one-half times the employ­ee’s reg­u­lar rate of pay for all hours worked over forty in any one workweek.

(The above sum­maries are from the final bill report writ­ten by non­par­ti­san staff.)

Our team at NPI is delight­ed to see this impor­tant pack­age of work­er pro­tec­tion bills signed into law. We are proud of all the great work done by Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mike Sells and Sen­a­tor Karen Keis­er to get us to this point. Hav­ing this work­er pro­tec­tion vic­to­ry rec­og­nized by the White House is espe­cial­ly sweet. Take a bow, Wash­ing­ton State activists! Our state deliv­ered anoth­er win for work­ers today.