I'm not going to give an opinion here, just pro and con arguments – and let readers make up their own mind. Feel free to post your opinions, however – I'm curious how the people of this country really feel about this issue.

Here's the deal: if you work in most industries and are required to put in more than forty hours a week, you are legally entitled to time and a half. Unless, of course you are a farmworker.

The exception has been California, where agriculture amounts to a $30 billion a year; in the 1970s, the California State Board of Labor put a rule in place that would entitle a farmworker to limited overtime pay in excess of ten hours Monday through Saturday – and all day Sunday, assuming they'd put in sixty hours during the previous week. Recently however, advocates for farm labor attempted to pass a bill that would have treated the people who actually pick produce the same as those who process it, pack it, and stock in on grocery store shelves, who are by law paid one-and-a-half times their normal hourly wage.

Although the bill passed both houses of the California State legislature, Governor Schwarzenegger vetoed it, based on what he heard from both from the big agribusiness corporations as well as organic farmers. Their lobbyists in Sacramento argued that because their operations are seasonal and subject to extremely narrow profit margins, they needed special exemptions from the law. Otherwise, payroll costs could rise ten percent or more. One organic farmer said that "the new law would turn the job into a minimum-wage job....the farmworkers would net out at less pay."  Although this may seem counter-intuitive, it should be pointed out that most farmworkers are in fact not paid by the hour, but by the amount they bring in from the field or the orchard – so this farm owner might have a point here.

On the other side, an ag policy consultant named Don Villarejo said that even if farmers would up cutting shifts to eight hours, they'd wind up hiring more people for more shifts – because the harvest waits for nobody. This would actually wind up costing farmers more – or would it? Villarejo, who formerly ran the California Institute for Rural Studies in Davis, pointed out that limiting farmworkers to an eight hour day would reduce the risk of injuries and other medical conditions that result from long periods of extreme physical exertion in a part of the country where daytime temperatures often exceed 100 degrees.

Now, I myself do not have a lot of sympathy for ConAgra, Monsanto, ADM or the rest of those huge corporate agricultural firms whose CEOs sit on their backsides collecting millions of dollars a year at the expense of workers and subcontractors who labor for next to nothing and receive nothing in the way of help when they're injured on the job – and are often tethered in an expolitive, one-sided relationship.

On the other hand, most of California's organic farms are small, family-owned and operated businesses whose owners are often out standing in their field with their workers, putting in the same hours – all while getting by on a very narrow margin and tight deadlines imposed by the harshest taskmaster of all – Mother Nature.

So I admit...I'm a little ambivalent on this issue. Any thoughts?