In 2023, University of California, Berkeley, assistant professor Alexandra Hill published research showing California’s 2016 agricultural overtime law had not achieved its goal of increasing earnings for farmworkers.
On the contrary, she found, Assembly Bill 1066 caused workers to lose hours and pay as farmers shortened the workweek to balance their wage bills. Hill said in a recent interview that her continued analysis of farmworker employment data showed farmworkers have earned roughly $100 less per week on average than they would have without AB 1066. “There is really convincing evidence that work hours for individual farmworkers fell after the law went into effect,” she said.
