Piece Rate

A recent court ruling has a lot of tree fruit producers concerned about how they are going to pay their workers for break times. Ranie Haas, Director of Regulatory & Industry Affairs for the Washington State Tree Fruit Association explains.

HAAS: The Washington State Supreme Court issued a ruling in the case of Demetrio vs Sakuma and this required employers to provide paid rest breaks to piece rate workers. Now this ruling has really enormous implications on the wage and rest break practices of all the employers with the employees paid by the piece or by the production and this has taken effect immediately.

She says it will affect their members in a couple of different ways.

HAAS: It's going to require employers and/or foremen or crew bosses to schedule the rest breaks, the employees themselves have to make sure that they take them. The employees don't get to deny or to decline or waive those 10-minute breaks any longer so the employers need to ensure these are being taken.

The other key issue is how to figure out the payment schedule for the breaks.

HAAS: They must pay the earned regular rate for the week in which the rest breaks were taken. This is where it gets kind of confusing and this is calculated on a weekly basis by dividing the earning for the week by hours worked less break time.

That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network of the West.