New York and California Back Jim Crow-Era Farmworker Laws

Two bills that would have given farmworkers the most basic of labor protections — overtime pay and one day of rest a week — were recently defeated in New York and California.

It was a disappointing series of events, and unfortunately, only the latest episode in over a century of our country's shameful treatment of farmworkers.

Farmworker regulations have stayed stubbornly mired in the racism of the Jim Crow era for generations — decades in which black and brown farmworkers have toiled in the most backbreaking, low-paying jobs in America imaginable. Meanwhile, white farmers and politicians have consistently fought to keep those workers sweating in the fields seven days a week — for pay that would be illegally low for any other workers in this country.

This is history that's rarely taught, so here's a quick primer: In the 1930s, Southern politicians pushed President Roosevelt to modify New Deal legislation to exclude black farmworkers from basic wage and hour laws. Southern congressmen hoped to preserve the race-based plantation system while netting profits for their farm-owning friends. Accordingly, since 1938, farmworkers have been exempt from the overtime pay and days off that are enjoyed by literally every other worker in America.

Such loopholes in New Deal-era legislation may have made Southern plantation owners wealthy beyond their wildest dreams, but they continue to devastate generations today. Even today, 70 years later, politicians like California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and New York senators parrot the antiquated agenda of good ol' Southern racists, bending over backwards to extract maximum labor from minority farmworkers.

It's time to put an end to all disgraceful vestiges of the Jim Crow era — including loopholes that exempt vulnerable farmworkers from basic wage and hour laws.

Photo Credit: Americanartmuseum