Sep 22, 2015

Court rules Washington growers must pay for rest breaks

The Washington Supreme Court has ruled that piece-rate workers must be paid separately for their rest breaks, a decision that will have a significant impact on the way the state’s growers pay their employees.

Dan Fazio said such a ruling could have “catastrophic” consequences for Washington’s growers. Speaking before the ruling was made, the director of wafla, a services provider for farm employers in the Pacific Northwest, said that if the court changed the state’s piece-rate law retroactively, agricultural employers might have to pay for worker rest breaks going back three years.

The court’s July 16 decision did not cover the issue of retroactivity, but wafla expected attorneys to begin filing cases for workers asking for back pay, penalties and attorney fees for the past three years. According to the organization, the cost to the state’s agricultural industry could be in the “tens of millions.”

According to the court’s ruling, “pay for rest breaks separate from the piece rate … is consistent with Washington case law interpreting rest break regulations.”

But Adam Belzberg, a partner at Stoel Rives and the attorney for the defendant farmer, disagreed. He said the court “relied on the illogical belief – without any supporting evidence – that the inclusion of rest break pay within the piece rate somehow incentivizes employers to employ fewer workers, and fosters a culture of working through breaks. In reality, the court’s ruling will do nothing to protect these stated interests, and simply opens the door to a flood of litigation that will expand far beyond agriculture to include any Washington employer using a pure piece-rate or commission pay system.”

The court stated that the amount of extra pay should be paid at whatever the worker earned during piece rate. Wafla calculated that if the worker is paid $20 per bin and produced 40 bins in a 50-hour pay period, that worker is entitled to rest-break pay at $16 per hour. If the worker was required to take two breaks each day at 10 minutes each, the worker would be entitled to an extra $26.67 for rest breaks for that weekly pay period.

The legal dispute goes back to October 2013, when piece-rate berry pickers filed a lawsuit against Sakuma Brothers Farms in Burlington, Washington. The lawsuit claimed that Sakuma violated both federal and state worker protection rules, and included complaints about not being paid for time worked, not being paid the minimum wage, not getting rest breaks and poor working conditions, said Marc Cote, lead attorney for the plaintiffs.

The case went into mediation last year, where a settlement was reached on every claim but the one involving rest breaks. According to Washington state law, employers are required to provide their employees a 10-minute, paid rest break for every four hours worked. In the settlement talks, Sakuma agreed to provide rest breaks but not to pay for them, Cote said.

Both sides made oral arguments before the Washington Supreme Court in March. Belzberg, Sakuma’s attorney, argued that the claim that piece-rate workers are not being paid when they’re taking rest breaks is misleading. With piece-rate workers, or any other workers paid on a commission basis, it’s always been the case that the payment covers everything that goes into producing the piece. In the Sakuma case, the piece rate covers not only the act of picking the berry off the bush, but the time it takes to fill the bucket, separate the poor-quality fruit – and take a 10-minute rest break every four hours.