Bill Aids Farm Workers

Three lawmakers personally introduced a bill to extend the state’s $5.15-an-hour minimum wage to farm workers starting in 2002.

The move on Monday avoided the need to win committee introduction of the legislation that nonetheless appears doomed when it is referred back to the House Agricultural Affairs Committee for consideration.

Democratic Rep. Ken Robison of Boise said introducing the proposal as a personal bill was a way of expediting the issue but was not a political maneuver.

Robison was joined by Reps. David Bieter, a Boise Democrat, and Tom Trail, a Moscow Republican, in introducing the proposal similar to one rejected by the House Agricultural Affairs Committee last year.

With commodity prices still severely depressed, Republican Gov. Dirk Kempthorne made it clear last fall that he does not consider the time ripe to lift agricultural labor’s exemption from the minimum wage law.

Twenty-three states have some form of minimum-wage law for farm workers.

The Idaho Farm Bureau Federation still opposes the change, arguing that only about 300 people earn less than the minimum wage and it would cost an estimated $120,000 a year to enforce the new law. But proponents contend there are as many as 6,000 people who earn below the minimum wage.

The new proposal would allow a training wage of $4.25 an hour for employees under 20 for the first 90 consecutive days on the job and credits for farmers who provide housing or food. It also would exclude agricultural labor from overtime pay provisions and require that farm workers paid on a piece rate receive at least the minimum wage.