Fairness for Farm Workers Act
Latest action. Referred to the House Committee on Education and Labor.
Fairness for Farm Workers Act
This bill amends the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 with respect to agricultural workers.
The bill requires employers, beginning in 2021, to compensate agricultural workers for hours worked in excess of their regular hours (i.e., 55 hours in 2021, 50 hours in 2022, 45 hours in 2023, and 40 hours in 2024) at not less than one and one-half times the employee's regular rate. For employers with 25 or fewer employees, the overtime pay requirements begin in 2024. These overtime pay requirements do not apply, as in current law, to employees who are the parent, spouse, child, or other member of the employer's immediate family.
The bill also repeals the exemption from overtime pay requirements for employers in various agriculture-related industries, including certain small farms, irrigation projects, sugar processing, and cotton ginning and compressing.
Written by analysts at the Congressional Research Service and published on Congress.gov, not by Civibrief. Summarized at the "Introduced in House" stage on February 7, 2019. It describes the bill, it is not the legal text.
Where is it in the process, and what happens next?
4 steps remain before this bill could become law.
The record's latest action, on February 7, 2019: Referred to the House Committee on Education and Labor.
- Clearing the committees it was referred to, and being scheduled for a floor vote
- Passage by the House
- Passage by the Senate
- The President's signature. If the President vetoes it, two-thirds of both chambers must vote to override.
How likely is it to become law?
Civibrief does not forecast outcomes and this page has no opinion about this one. What the record supports is a base rate, which is a fact about the whole pile, not a prediction about this measure.
In the 116th Congress (2019-20), 344 of the 14,345 bills and joint resolutions introduced became law, about 2.4 percent. That count covers every measure at every stage, including the many that never left committee.
This one is not there yet: 4 steps are still outstanding, listed above.
Has anyone actually voted on it?
No. No roll call in this Congress cites this measure. That is the ordinary outcome: most measures never reach a recorded floor vote, and a committee ends most of them simply by not acting.
A vote is not the only thing that happens to a measure. Hearings, markups, and referrals are all recorded actions, and none of them is a vote of the full chamber.
Who is behind it?
Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) introduced it on February 7, 2019, and 65 members have since signed on as cosponsors.
Cosponsoring is a formal signature on the text. It is not a commitment to vote for the measure, it does not bind anyone's party, and a long list of cosponsors is a measure of attention rather than of prospects.
How long has it been in play?
It was introduced on February 7, 2019, 2819 days ago. The most recent recorded action was 2819 days ago, on February 7, 2019.
Measures do not carry over. Anything the 116th Congress has not finished by January 3, 2021 dies when the term ends, and has to be introduced again from the start in the next Congress.
Every answer above is assembled from this measure's own record on Congress.gov and from published counts of what Congress has passed before. Civibrief does not predict outcomes and takes no position on any measure.
Vote history
- HouseIn committee, no floor vote yet
- SenateAwaits House passage
- PresidentAwaits both chambers