
A day at the California farm where the workers will get the pay they deserve - prostoalex
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/21/california-farmers-overtime-pay-mcgraths-family-farm
======
Animats
If only it were real. The California farm labor overtime provisions don't even
start to take effect until 2019 and don't fully take effect until 2025.

What is happening soon are the new US overtime rules for salaried employees.
Those take effect in two months. After December 1, 2016, anyone making less
than $47,476/yr has to be paid overtime.

~~~
exclusiv
I recently found out that as of February 2016, an exempt employee working
full-time in CA must be paid a minimum salary of $41,600/year. It's 2x the
minimum wage.

I support raising the minimum wage in itself, but if that goes up anymore, I
simply will not hire certain positions (entry level positions, assistants,
maybe even jr devs) because it doesn't make sense at 2x for their skill level
and/or role.

I understand what they are trying to do, but if business owners can't make a
profit in this state with rules like the 2x one, they'll move or outsource as
much as possible (offshore, staffing company, etc).

~~~
st3v3r
If you can't make a profit without extremely lowballing and undercutting your
employees, do you deserve to stay in business?

~~~
exclusiv
Your comment is so simplistic and inaccurate. It's not lowballing and
undercutting employees to pay $41.6k to lower level people for 40 hours of
work. Especially when you layer on good benefits like we do that aren't
accounted for in the salary requirement. We do 3% of salary automatic
contribution to 401k each year, allow employees to work from home, good
healthcare and vacation/discretionary, etc.

Other states don't have these rules and competition in many industries is
across states or globally.

~~~
dragonwriter
> It's not lowballing and undercutting employees to pay $41.6k to lower level
> people for 40 hours of work.

And nothing in the actual law prevents you from paying $41.6k or less (the
whole way down to the minimum wage) for 40 hours of work. What you can't do is
pay $41.6k or less and then _not_ pay overtime. (And the threshold is much
higher if you rely on the computer-related work exemption, and you have to pay
overtime _regardless_ of base pay if the work doesn't qualify for some
exemption -- unlike the Feds which do at $100k [rising to $134k], California
doesn't have an unqualified "high-pay" exemption.)

------
jimmywanger
This is an interesting subject.

Not to interject politics into it, but during the debate last night one of the
candidates said that they wanted to raise the minimum wage (to 15 an hour I
believe), while simultaneously adding more good paying jobs to the economy.

Those are fundamentally opposite goals - at least, the government isn't going
to be able to do it in any meaningful way.

With a 15 dollar minimum wage, fast food restaurants are rolling out kiosk
technology, that allows you to order without an employee present. Even
Applebee's and TGI Friday's is experimenting with software + an iPad to allow
you to order directly from your table.

Those jobs aren't coming back. Not ever. Kiosks don't complain, they don't
screw up orders, they don't have sick days, and they work for free. Once the
initial capital investment is over, it's pure profit, and for those who say
that you can have more jobs repairing and servicing the kiosks, I say that if
the price to repair and service kiosks goes higher than the wage for
employees, the kiosks will go the way of the dodo.

Take a look at Eatsa. [http://insidescoopsf.sfgate.com/blog/2015/08/31/fast-
food-re...](http://insidescoopsf.sfgate.com/blog/2015/08/31/fast-food-
reinvented-eatsa-a-fully-automated-restaurant-opens-today/).

They have 5-6 back of the house employees. The cashier jobs are not coming
back.

~~~
icanhackit
> The cashier jobs are not coming back.

Right, but I have to wonder if those who want to keep minimum wage down really
care about keeping jobs for all these people. Surely they'd celebrate the
impending automation of these jobs, where they only need to worry about
purchasing equipment rather than the well-being of squishy meat-bags known as
employees? I just find it hard to believe it's for altruistic reasons that
they want wages kept low, considering they'd sooner have a machine or third
party make their tortillas, grind their coffee, bake their bread etc. than
have staff do it in-house like someone who actually cared about jobs or even
quality.

The people who will buy food from the vending machine type services: The
people at the bottom. And competing businesses will find ways of making food
and services cheaper and cheaper as technology improves. The people earning
respectable amounts of money for their time and effort, they're going to be
eating at places served by other people. You've merely shifted those at the
bottom one step forward in the food chain.

The proof? Look at countries like Australia where the minimum wage is already
respectable and you'll find low unemployment and a lot of people working in
hospitality or similar services.

~~~
jimmywanger
> Right, but I have to wonder if those who want to keep minimum wage down
> really care about keeping jobs for all these people. Surely they'd celebrate
> the impending automation of these jobs, where they only need to worry about
> purchasing equipment rather than the well-being of squishy meat-bags known
> as employees?

They don't care, but the restaurant business is precarious. They know that
hiring people for minimum wage works, and keeps their margins the way they
are. However, investing is kiosks and hardware is something they'd have to
amortize over time.

An increase in minimum wage might tip them over - the risk of the machines not
working and constantly requiring expensive repairs might be outweighed by the
fact you don't have to pay extra money to your employees.

> The people earning respectable amounts of money for their time and effort,
> they're going to be eating at places served by other people.

Just a personal anecodote, I'm fairly antisocial. I'd rather line up in a self
service lane or self checkout line in a grocery or fast food place than deal
with another person. And I doubt I qualify as a person "at the bottom".

~~~
icanhackit
> An increase in minimum wage might tip them over

People in the US look at things in a vacuum, however a good portion of the
rest of the world, chiefly Western Europe, Australia and Canada make high
minimum wage, good food and service work.

> Just a personal anecodote, I'm fairly antisocial.

Then I'm in good company. If you've ever been to the big cities in Japan
you'll notice that you can buy cheap delicious ramen ordered from a ticket
machine and served to you through a curtain in your booth so that you never
see another person's face, but you'll also notice lines out the door for mid
and high-end restaurants. Cheapness and ease of access has nothing to do with
desire.

~~~
jimmywanger
> Cheapness and ease of access has nothing to do with desire.

I guess that I don't understand the concept of desire. To me, there is no
additional benefit for having people serve me, except that the food might be
better. I'd be just as happy getting a sandwich from an automat as from a
person serving it on a china plate.

Simply put, what value do we get from human interaction in a dining setting?

~~~
icanhackit
> Simply put, what value do we get from human interaction in a dining setting?

Sorry if there's a running theme here - using Japan as an example where
automation, pre-made foods and very hands-on service are all widely available:
automated services mean that whatever ingredients you're using need to be
consistent in flavor, size, shape etc. Humans have greater capacity to adapt
with what resources they have. Pre-made foods are relatively bland as a result
of this. It's like the difference between McDonalds, which has very tight
processes and a largely inflexible menu, versus a gourmet burger joint which
might be using a different cheese, grade of bun, larger patties, more or less
condiments from one day to another.

Another example would be micro-brewed beers versus macro-brewed beers. Micro-
brewed beers tend to be more exotic in their flavors and styles while
sacrificing consistency, whereas macro-brewed beers tend to be very consistent
in taste at the expense of flavor.

Judging from your personal preferences this probably means little to you but,
usually for hedonistic reasons, it's important to most other people. The above
also ignores peoples needs for social contact, desire to appear more wealthy
or sophisticated than they really are etc. It's illogical but humans use these
aspects as breeding tools and to trigger dopamine release. Sex and drugs.

~~~
jimmywanger
Hate to belabor a point but I think there's something I'm missing and want to
get to the bottom of it.

I think chefs aren't going anywhere for a while. They're in charge of too many
things, from sourcing food, preparing and coming up with new dishes, balancing
the seasoning for every dish, etc etc. Appearances to the contrary, I really
do like eating good food and I have fairly high standards when it comes to
food, and I appreciate what chefs have to do to make the most out of nothing.
("Beef tongue is only 1.50 a pound! Guess what's on special tonight")

The benefit I'm not seeing is having a human being (be it a fast food worker,
or a waiter) take your order. That's the part I don't get. I would love to
order through a touch screen and just have the food come out. Unless you're a
sommelier, you really don't add any value to the dining experience, unless the
customer likes bossing people around.

~~~
icanhackit
> The benefit I'm not seeing is having a human being (be it a fast food
> worker, or a waiter) take your order

All you have to get is that people enjoy ceremony, feeling special, appearing
above their station or other individuals due to biological underpinnings.
Logical people like yourself are above that silliness, most people aren't and
I don't see a renaissance on the way for objective thinking. I'd argue it's
going the other way.

Edit: this sort of comes back to economic policy relying on rational choice
theory or the rational actor, when we know it completely ignores the reality
of how people make decisions. Several threads on HN have discussed how
economic policy needs to move away from rational choice theory and adopt
psychological models to predict behavior. Humans aren't logical.

------
h4nkoslo
Farm owners will likely compensate for their higher wages by advocating for
importing more labor to lower their costs. Expect the perennial "crops rotting
in the fields" stories to resume soon.

~~~
gozur88
What will probably happen is workers will only get 32 hours through each farm
labor contractor, and they'll end up working for more than one contractor.

------
tomjen3
Since the headline doesn't tell you: they will now be paid overtime.

While sorta funny that they are and programmers aren't, in all practicality it
will mostly mean a few more will be hired, and that it will be more difficult
to get more than 8 hours a day.

~~~
Naritai
I assume you mean "in all practicality it will mostly mean a few more
[workers] will be hired, and that it will be more difficult to get more [hours
in your shift] than 8 hours a day."

It's not clear to me, of course, why anybody who gets neither overtime nor
equity would want longer than 8 hour shifts. Maybe because making other people
richer is so much fun?

~~~
jahewson
You've misunderstood - the employees are already paid for overtime hours, but
at the normal rate.

Now that there will be a higher overtime rate, it can, in some cases make
sense for businesses to hire more employees rather than to pay existing
employees to work overtime. For employees who choose to work overtime, that's
bad news.

