0:21 1993 the family medical leave act
0:24 this was signed into law under president
0:26 clinton at the time and
0:27 and it
0:28 it
0:30 requires employers of a certain size i
0:32 think the cutoff is 50
0:35 to grant an eligible employee up to a
0:39 total of 12 work weeks of unpaid leave
0:42 during any 12-month period so it didn't
0:47 require employers to provide paid leave
0:50 but at least you've got your job if you
0:56 do something for a sick parent a sick child
0:57 child
0:59 or go through some other
1:04 situation a newborn child and adoption
1:06 there are a number of things that you
1:09 might have to deal with in your own
1:11 personal family life
1:13 and the
1:16 law now requires that you can come back
1:18 to your job or at least
1:21 an equivalent job after
1:23 you leave they can't fire you or in any
1:26 way discriminate against you because of
1:28 that leave and
1:29 and
1:32 as great as that sounds well who can
1:33 afford to do that
1:36 some people can some people can't some
1:38 people have a spouse or other family
1:40 members can pick up the slack while
1:44 you're taking leave but
1:45 it's a drop in the bucket but at least
1:52 i would say that a lot of people in
1:54 other countries laugh at the united
1:57 states about our constant
1:59 constant
2:03 use of the phrase family values yet
2:05 we won't provide health coverage we
2:07 won't provide paid leave
2:10 the amount of vacations that we allow
2:13 families are
2:16 pretty limited compared to most european countries
2:23 now one of the things just a little
2:26 aside when this first happened in 93
2:27 there were a lot of companies that
2:30 started to do something that is illegal
2:32 but they would take employees and
2:33 and
2:37 switch them over to contractor status
2:39 you're no longer my employee
2:41 you are a
2:43 an independent contract
2:46 what does that do that might get their
2:48 number of employees down below 50 i
2:51 think it is so now they no longer have
2:53 to comply with the family medical leave
2:56 at so if a company had 60 employees and
2:58 they could squeeze
3:00 12 of them off the books now they don't
3:03 have to comply um
3:05 um
3:07 or they don't have to provide a lot of
3:10 benefits by making somebody a contractor
3:13 uh you either are or aren't a contractor
3:16 and making somebody who technically is
3:18 an employee somebody who works for you
3:22 must follow your hours your duties is
3:24 under your control they're an employee
3:27 entitled to all employee
3:29 benefits and protections they're not an
3:31 independent contractor
3:33 but there was a bunch of companies
3:36 across the country that started to do
3:38 this as soon as the
3:40 family medical leave act was put into
3:41 law because they didn't want to have to
3:43 deal with it
3:47 i think it's a shame i think we should
3:50 automatically have paid
3:53 leave for
3:55 adoptions and
3:57 births and
3:59 somebody's sick i mean
4:01 i don't think we are truly a country of
4:04 family values certainly not in terms of
4:11 2004
4:14 took quite a while to fill in some of
4:16 the gaps on
4:23 we have the california's paid
4:24 paid
4:26 family leave law
4:29 and so that is a
4:31 reduced pay situation
4:32 situation
4:36 if you are in a company as an employee
4:39 under the state disability insurance program
4:40 program
4:43 you can get a maximum of six weeks of
4:44 partial pay
4:46 time off of work for very similar
4:48 situations as the family and medical
4:50 leave at
4:52 so how does this all work you've got
4:55 disability insurance you've got paid
4:58 family leave you've got unpaid family
5:00 and medical leave at the federal level
5:02 it can be a nightmare to try and figure
5:05 out how do i deal with all of this
5:07 a lot of good companies have something called
5:08 called
5:12 uh a human resources department with a specialist
5:14 specialist
5:16 who is there for
5:18 employee rights now
5:21 any larger company has a human resources department
5:22 department
5:24 and even the smaller ones might have a
5:26 human resources department or at least
5:28 one or two people to run human resources activities
5:29 activities
5:31 but in a good company
5:33 the human resources specialist will help
5:35 you navigate this and line up things
5:38 where you can do a combination of paid
5:44 in order to take to maximize your
5:47 ability to get the benefits that you are
5:49 entitled to
5:51 but it can be very very difficult to
5:54 negotiate if your company doesn't have
5:56 somebody who's willing to help you
5:59 navigate these kinds of things in the event
6:00 event
6:03 of a birth of a child of
6:06 an adoption a sick family member there
6:11 labor organizations
6:13 organizations
6:22 employees and not just ag employees but
6:23 any employees um
6:24 um
6:29 in 2016
6:32 just five years ago roughly california
6:34 cruz av-1066
6:36 authorizing all workers including ag
6:38 workers to receive
6:42 overtime pay for all work after eight hours
6:43 hours
6:45 i would think most of you have heard
6:48 about this this is a big big deal it was
6:49 phased in
6:52 over the last several years it became
6:54 fully phased in i believe it was january
6:56 1st of 2020 and
6:57 and
6:59 in agriculture that a lot of people were
7:06 it's something you have to deal with
7:09 it doesn't impact union employees
7:12 because union employees have a union
7:15 contract negotiated between the employee
7:17 group and the company
7:19 and so if you're under a contract you
7:22 can set up your hours anyway within limits
7:23 limits
7:25 you know you can't do
7:28 23-hour shifts
7:30 in agriculture certainly you can do
7:32 longer shifts like there are 24-hour
7:34 shifts in law enforcement and fire and
7:38 things like that because it you need to
7:40 you know an active event
7:43 um an active fire you know i've worked a
7:44 lot of
7:47 24-hour shifts when i was
7:49 a firefighter back in the day and
7:50 and
7:53 that's just what you have to do because that's
7:54 that's
7:56 the requirements of the job
7:58 but in agriculture in a lot of other
8:00 things that are non-union um
8:02 um
8:04 eight hours period and
8:06 if you are union even though you don't
8:09 have to comply with the eight-hour rule you
8:10 you
8:12 there are lots of other ways to make
8:13 sure that
8:21 fair compensation and working conditions
8:24 now with a union you could do four tents
8:26 to get your 40 hours and a lot of people
8:28 love that i've got some friends that
8:30 just love working for a
8:32 organization that has
8:35 410 so you work 10 hours a day
8:37 monday through thursday and now you got
8:41 a three-day weekend every week yay um
8:43 now in agriculture you're probably working
8:44 working
8:47 a lot of 50 hour if not 60 hour weeks
8:48 that's kind of normal
8:51 especially if your farm manager 60 hours
8:54 is just what you do you're there uh
8:56 ready to roll at six and you're there
8:59 until the sun goes down on most days and um
9:01 um
9:02 that's life
9:05 that you know you need to know what your
9:13 at least if you're not covered by a union
9:14 union
9:15 eight hours
9:18 is the maximum before uh
9:20 uh
9:23 overtime kicks in
9:26 with some exceptions as you might
9:28 uh unders you might expect
9:31 so in federal law the labor
9:32 labor
9:36 law is uh administered primarily by the
9:38 department of labor but labor is
9:42 extremely comprehensive and complicated
9:44 and so there are lots of other
9:46 regulatory agencies besides the
9:49 department of labor that get involved in
9:52 labor laws uh so for example osha which
9:54 i've already mentioned
9:56 it deals with safety but is that
9:59 overlapping with labor issues oh definitely
10:03 um
10:06 subject to the provisions of the fair
10:08 labor standards act as well as state
10:12 laws that's how they determine wages and
10:14 and
10:15 uh in
10:18 states you can either follow
10:20 federal law or if you're going to do
10:22 something different it has to be the
10:24 same or higher
10:25 than federal law
10:27 so there's minimum wages
10:29 which is
10:30 i would argue
10:42 you can see how over
10:44 many many decades
10:46 wages have changed
10:50 um from
10:53 one level to the next but at the federal level
10:54 level
10:55 there hasn't been any movement in the
10:58 minimum wage since
11:01 2009 has there been any increase in costs
11:03 costs
11:06 has there been inflation since 2009 yeah
11:10 i would say that 725 is
11:12 an embarrassment if
11:14 if
11:17 federal minimum wages kept kept pace
11:19 with inflation we'd be somewhere between
11:22 17 and 20 an hour depending on how you
11:23 looked at it uh
11:24 uh
11:26 i understand some of the arguments that
11:28 you know there needs to be minimum wage
11:30 for training jobs and for
11:32 uh entry-level situations but there are
11:35 people that work minimum wage for
11:38 years and they're not an entry level
11:41 fine if you have uh some sort of a
11:43 short-term internship
11:44 if you have um
11:47 um
11:49 you know job training period for the
11:50 first three months
11:52 uh you're a high school student doing
11:55 some work studies type
11:58 situation i can understand the argument
11:59 to have a
12:02 a lower wage but if you're an
12:04 experienced adult worker who's not in
12:06 part of their training
12:11 uh this idea that 7.25 an hour even in
12:14 the most backwater section of louisiana or
12:20 the lowest wage states
12:22 in the country probably would be
12:24 louisiana alabama
12:27 south carolina places that
12:30 have these wages 7.25 an hour isn't
12:31 isn't enough
12:33 enough
12:36 it doesn't make any sense you cannot
12:39 afford anything with that
12:42 so that's the federal minimum wage the
12:46 floor is pretty damn low at the federal
12:52 california state minimum
12:56 is 11 an hour
12:59 uh 10.50 for smaller companies um
13:00 um
13:04 i believe some areas are 13 an hour
13:06 i don't think there's been any movement
13:07 here i
13:09 think this is the industrial relations
13:11 this must be current um
13:18 san francisco i think is 15 an hour so
13:20 depending on where you are because of
13:22 local conditions you can
13:35 federal minimum wage and overtime pay
13:38 does not require severance pay severance
13:40 pay is money that you get after you
13:41 leave a company
13:43 so when you
13:46 are laid off a lot of times in higher
13:49 level positions the company will give
13:53 you a couple weeks or a month of pay
13:55 for work that you didn't do
13:58 to give you some money to survive till
14:00 you get that next job that's called
14:03 severance pay
14:06 there's no requirement that is used as a
14:08 reward to
14:10 some employees unfortunately it's
14:12 usually only the higher level employees
14:14 that get this
14:16 what we call the exempt employees which
14:18 i'll get to in a minute um
14:24 but it's not everybody and it can be
14:27 used as a recruiting tool you're trying
14:29 to get employees to come work for your
14:30 company well if you've got a good
14:33 reputation for providing benefits and
14:35 severance pay and sick leave and
14:37 vacations and holidays all of these
14:39 things that are not mandated or required
14:41 under law
14:42 it can help
14:47 attract employees come to your company
14:49 for agricultural operations it prohibits
14:51 the employment of children under the age
14:53 of 16
14:57 during school hours and in certain jobs
14:59 deemed too dangerous and
15:00 and [Music]
15:01 [Music]
15:03 in agriculture pretty much everything
15:06 outside is deemed too dangerous so
15:07 unless you're in the front office
15:10 working with the payroll folks or
15:12 something like that if you're in a
15:15 warehouse or you're in the field
15:18 it's too dangerous and so
15:20 the only time you see people working in
15:23 ag under the age of 16
15:25 is usually
15:26 when it's
15:32 on the family farm you're the child of
15:35 somebody who owns the farm and then
15:37 the rules are a little different for
15:41 working on a family farm
15:44 uh so there's a narrow gap
15:47 16 to 18 that two year window
15:50 where it's much easier to get employees
15:55 that are in that age group and
15:56 not only hiring them getting them on
16:00 your insurance and finding work for them
16:02 even though it's easier it's still not
16:04 easy enough
16:07 having a
16:10 worker in agriculture who's between the
16:12 ages of 16 and 18
16:14 for a lot of companies it's not worth it
16:15 and i know
16:17 several companies that
16:18 that
16:22 they won't do it it's just not worth it
16:25 they will only hire 18 and older just to
16:28 avoid the insurance premium you pay more
16:31 for having underage workers and all of
16:32 the other
16:35 liability issues of having an underage worker
16:37 worker so
16:38 so
16:42 you can it's just a little tricky
16:47 unless you're on your own family farm
16:49 next we come to the word exempt i
16:52 mentioned that a moment ago to be exempt
16:55 from minimum wage and overtime pay
16:57 requirements you must meet certain
17:00 requirements so when we say an exempt employee
17:02 employee
17:05 we're talking about exemption from
17:08 minimum wage and overtime now the exempt
17:11 from minimum wage really
17:14 isn't relevant in the vast majority of
17:17 cases because
17:20 the people who qualify as exempt employees
17:22 employees
17:24 with very few exceptions make more than
17:27 minimum wage by a lot
17:29 so these are executives administrative
17:32 positions professional employees sales employees
17:34 employees
17:37 certain skilled computer professionals
17:39 in sales sometimes you get commission
17:41 you don't get paid anything you either
17:43 sell or you don't
17:45 and you get a percentage off of your sale
17:46 sale
17:48 that is legal um
17:49 um
17:51 but you have to be careful how you set
17:53 that up because there are ways that can
17:55 be being illegal for that
17:58 so if you are in a position um
18:05 of higher responsibility
18:08 then you can get uh
18:09 uh
18:11 in exempt status
18:13 the good thing
18:14 you're making more money
18:16 your salary you don't have to worry
18:18 about keeping
18:20 track of your hours
18:22 and so a lot of people here exempt
18:24 employee and what's that salaried
18:26 employee oh i know what that is you get
18:28 a fixed amount
18:30 every week or every month regardless of
18:32 how many hours you put it
18:35 problem is
18:37 regardless of how many hours you put it
18:40 because most exempt employees that i know
18:41 know
18:44 don't work 40 hours and go home some do
18:47 yay for you i wish i was in that spot
18:49 they work
18:52 overtime and they don't get a cent
18:53 whether you work
18:56 40 50 30 100
18:58 100
19:01 100 hours a week that is killer
19:03 killer
19:04 does it happen
19:06 oh yeah
19:08 i spent
19:11 two months doing 100 hours a week eight
19:12 weeks straight
19:15 and damn near killed me but
19:17 not literally but i was
19:19 dead to the world um
19:21 um
19:23 and then when things slowed down i was
19:25 only doing 75 um
19:26 um
19:28 was i being taken advantage of by the company
19:30 company yeah
19:31 yeah
19:33 was there much i could do about it not really
19:35 really
19:37 was i my own worst enemy
19:40 part of the problem no doubt
19:44 i let it happen to a certain extent but
19:46 god passed the hurdle and
19:50 so who else
19:51 else
19:53 would be exempt fishing operations i
19:55 think that's pretty easy to understand
19:58 you're out in the ocean on a fishing boat
19:59 boat
20:01 you can't be clock in the hours that it
20:03 doesn't make sense
20:06 um what about farm workers on small farms
20:07 farms
20:09 so you've got
20:11 really small companies less than 500
20:13 what they call mandates or worker days
20:16 to be more politically correct
20:20 and modern terminology um
20:21 in a calendar quarter if you have less
20:26 than 500 days work in three months oops um
20:27 um
20:28 you're a pretty dang small company so
20:30 you might be able to [Music]
20:32 [Music]
20:35 squeeze in on an exemption
20:37 for overtime in that
20:40 category you still
20:43 in that category would have to comply
20:46 with minimum um
20:47 um
20:50 exempt from overtime pay only but not um
20:51 um
20:54 not minimum wage uh
20:55 uh
20:57 auto truck and farm implement sales
21:00 persons parts clerks mechanics non-manufacturing
21:02 non-manufacturing
21:04 or excuse me mechanics um
21:06 farm workers right there
21:09 um farm workers are exempt from overtime
21:13 pay in the federal eyes in
21:14 in
21:16 california we get overtime pay after
21:18 eight hours now unless
21:21 it's governed by a union remember you
21:22 got to keep these
21:26 federal versus state issues
21:27 separate i won't try and trick you on
21:29 any test but you do have to keep that in
21:31 the back of your mind at the federal
21:33 level farm workers are exempt from overtime
21:35 overtime
21:37 but there's still our rules you can't
21:39 say oh you're exempt from overtime so
21:41 i'm going to work you 14 hour days
21:44 no that doesn't work doesn't fly
21:47 uh minimum wage we already looked at
21:49 that i've been
21:57 there is something called piece rate
21:59 maybe you've heard of it
22:01 instead of paying an employee so many
22:04 dollars an hour you pay them for so much
22:08 piece of work maybe so many cents per
22:10 uh clam shell of strawberries you
22:14 harvest and pack maybe so many cents per
22:17 length of irrigation pipe you put in the
22:20 field irrigate or whatever so the
22:23 faster your crew is the better you work
22:25 the more you get done the more you get
22:26 paid at the end of the day
22:30 but if you are on a
22:33 piece rate type of position
22:35 and things are not going well that day
22:38 you can never give them the employee less
22:39 less than
22:40 than
22:42 minimum wage at the end of the day so if
22:44 they put in an eight hour day
22:47 on piece rate at the minimum what you
22:49 pay them has to be if it's in a federally
22:51 federally
22:54 controlled area 7.25 an hour if it's in
22:56 california probably eleven dollars an hour
22:57 hour um
22:59 um
23:01 as a minimum now one of the things that
23:02 i did as
23:04 an employer
23:06 uh occasionally we would have these bad
23:08 fields and strawberries there was a
23:11 problem we still need to harvest them
23:13 but the crew would never make their
23:16 piece rate the same in these couple of
23:18 fields that had problems and
23:19 and
23:21 because there were problems they would
23:23 be working
23:24 the same number of hours but they
23:27 wouldn't get as many strawberries
23:29 as many flats of strawberries done in a
23:31 day so we increased the piece rate in
23:33 those fields
23:35 we didn't say well you're still making
23:38 minimum wage be happy and
23:39 go home no
23:42 you're going to get unhappy workers and
23:43 they're going to leave and labor is
23:45 really important not only to be good to
23:47 your employees but to keep
23:50 workers on your crew and so the
23:52 strawberry crew back in those days we
23:55 would make sure that we didn't pay them
23:56 a piece rate
23:59 that met minimum wage we would pay them
24:02 a piece rate that would match their
24:04 normal piece rate so you know just a
24:06 round number if you they normally made a
24:09 hundred dollars during a day
24:11 and they were in a bad field that
24:14 technically they only earned eighty
24:16 dollars that day because of the bad conditions
24:18 conditions
24:20 we bumped it up to 100
24:22 so they wouldn't go anywhere it was our
24:25 problem it was our fault that they had a
24:27 couple of bad feels not the workers fault
24:32 other labor laws i'm not going to go
24:33 through these we've talked about some of
24:38 them already but there are lots of laws
24:41 many more than this related to wage payments
24:47 health and
24:50 benefits um
24:53 there are group health plans that are generally
24:54 generally
24:56 provided for
24:59 employees that do get it they can be
25:03 provided by the employer or by a union
25:05 and the employer might purchase them
25:07 through an organization like the western
25:08 growers association
25:11 that gives them better bargaining power
25:14 so you've got hundreds of small ag
25:16 companies that all go together and buy
25:18 their insurance through western growers
25:20 association now western growers
25:22 association can turn around to the big
25:25 insurance company and instead of
25:28 you as a small company trying to say i
25:32 want to buy insurance for 25 employees
25:34 western growers can turn around on your
25:36 behalf and say we want to negotiate a
25:38 health contract for thousands of
25:41 employees you get a better deal
25:44 the union same thing union groups can provide
25:45 provide
25:48 health benefits for
25:52 the employees within the union
25:54 erisa the employee retirement income
25:56 security act
25:58 this provides minimum standards for
26:00 pensions and health plans
26:02 so it's in this section because of the
26:04 health plan portion
26:06 and it provides specific
26:09 information about what a company must do
26:12 in order to properly provide and fund a
26:14 pension or a health plan for employees
26:18 so it meets standards you must meet
26:20 basic standards i'm going to provide a
26:22 pension for employees or even a 401k
26:24 program which is different rules it's
26:26 not erisa but
26:27 if i'm going to provide something i have
26:29 to meet these minimum standards
26:31 i'm going to provide a health insurance
26:34 plan i can't just say look at us we're
26:36 providing health insurance
26:38 and it's basically a bottle of asp
26:39 that's all you get
26:41 that's your health insurance plan uh you
26:43 can't do that if it's going to be call
26:46 the health insurance plan it has to meet certain
26:47 certain standards
26:49 standards
26:52 there have been numerous amendments to
26:54 erisa because it's changed over the years
26:56 years
26:59 it's very complicated in terms of
27:01 insurance right now and
27:02 again i would argue another
27:04 international embarrassment how the hell
27:07 do we have such a massively
27:09 uh successful and wealthy country that
27:12 we don't provide health insurance
27:14 for our citizens and i don't care which
27:16 side of the political spectrum you are i
27:19 think it's absurd the idea that we can't
27:22 afford to provide health insurance for
27:26 as a standard basic right as an american citizen
27:32 it's a laughable lie of course we could um
27:35 um
27:37 we just don't and we don't for many
27:38 different reasons
27:41 and so what are we stuck with a very
27:44 bizarre insurance problem
27:45 problem
27:47 a quagmire of all of these different
27:49 things where some people get great
27:51 insurance some people get crappy
27:53 insurance some people don't get any
27:55 insurance at all some people think they
27:57 have insurance that covers things and
28:03 so over the years
28:04 there have been
28:08 efforts to put little plugs in the hole
28:10 of all of this we've had the affordable
28:13 affordable care act which
28:15 maybe you know better as obamacare and
28:19 we have covered california which is
28:22 our local california versions of
28:25 options for obamacare [Music]
28:27 [Music]
28:30 but other things like erisa have also
28:33 been fixed amended tweaked
28:36 to try to have something that gets
28:38 a lot of people coverage
28:40 unfortunately we have millions that
28:42 don't have
28:44 cobra i never could remember
28:46 consolidated omnibus budget
28:48 reconciliation act but cobra did
28:51 something that i remember when i was
28:54 changing from one job to the next cobra
28:58 gave me a guaranteed right to purchase
29:00 the same insurance as long as i didn't
29:03 let it lapse the same insurance as i had
29:05 with my employer so i just notified my
29:07 employer i want to keep the insurance
29:09 that i had with you
29:12 and i'm leaving
29:14 there's a limit i don't know how long
29:16 you can keep it it's only for a few
29:18 months but you can keep it um
29:20 um
29:22 it was very expensive but
29:25 my wife at the time was pregnant and um
29:27 um
29:29 we had to have health insurance and so i
29:30 paid this
29:33 outrageous amount for
29:35 two or three months till i got settled and
29:35 and
29:42 the health insurance portability and
29:44 accountability act allows you to take
29:47 insurance with you so you have continued
29:50 coverage when you change jobs again it's
29:52 very complicated
29:56 and it shouldn't be
29:58 number one reason why americans go
30:02 bankrupt and end up on um
30:04 um
30:06 government assistance when they weren't before
30:08 before
30:10 health issues
30:12 they have a medical condition or
30:13 something that wipes them out wipes out
30:16 their savings takes their home takes everything
30:18 everything
30:20 it's not right so
30:25 i think i'll
