When a doctor diagnoses cancer, the expectation is a full course of treatment to eradicate the disease and keep a person alive, not a Band-Aid and well-wishes. The current budget has identified a cancer in the form of how agricultural overtime was introduced in Washington state but rather than treat the problem, farmers and ranchers are being offered a Band-Aid.

The Senate operating budget contains $250,000 for a grant program to off-set the costs of paying overtime to any employer in our state who meets the qualifying criteria. The employer must be a Washington state resident, they must employ exclusively local workers, they must have paid at least four weeks of overtime last year, and they must grow specialty, hand-picked crops that are sold in-state or to schools. The reward for meeting that extremely restrictive set of criteria is $20,000.

Washington state’s minimum wage earners command $16.28/hr, the second highest minimum wage in the nation. If that is the lowest benchmark for earning in the state, and the average farmworker works 20 hours of overtime in peak season, that is $487/week in overtime pay. The Washington State Department of Commerceestimates there are 164,000 people employed in agriculture in our state. The most recent U.S. Census of Agriculture data notes there are 32,100 farms in Washington state. 

With Washington state farms and ranches employing an average of five employees per farm, it would take the average farm just two months to reach the maximum payout of the grant program. Anecdotal reports say in 2023 most farms were paying upwards of $23/hr. for farm work, meaning it would take a little less than six weeks to reach the maximum payout of the grant program.

At $250,000, the proviso would only cover overtime for about 15 farms.

It is refreshing to see a legislative acknowledgement of the mess the overtime law created. But the acknowledgement is much too little and much too late. A $250,000 grant program during a supplemental budget year when billions of dollars are being thrown around feels disingenuous, it feels like giving a cookie to an overly tired child you hope will go away.

If lawmakers really wanted to find a solution to the difficulties of overtime, they could. They could listen to the workers who were never asked for their thoughts to begin with. For too long agriculture has been told what to do and how to think by lawmakers who have no experience tending to fields. It is time to listen to the people who have the experience when they sit at a testimony table or line the steps of the capital asking for help.

In a state where the catastrophic effects of overtime legislation mean farms and ranches are vanishing at a rate of 14 per week, every week, it is incumbent upon the lawmakers who saw fit to enact overtime to fix it. If they don’t fix it, not only will there be no overtime to earn, but there will also be no regular time for farmworkers to earn either.