Farm workers across Virginia are about to be guaranteed a minimum wage.
Ever since the dark days of Jim Crow, farmer owners in Virginia have been able to skirt the minimum wage law and offer their workers lower pay. Now, Governor Abigail Spanberger is signing legislation to put an end to an exclusion that dates back to the 1930s.
"We know that farm workers do the hard, back breaking work of harvesting and picking and packaging our food and produce, and they need to get paid what they're worth," says Senator Jennifer Carroll Foy, a Democrat from Prince William County who introduced the bill. "They're working in extreme conditions, and the least of us and the least amongst us should get paid what we're worth and definitely not poverty wages."
Poverty wages are an unfortunate reality on some Virginia farms, says Delegate Adele McClure, a Democrat from Arlington.
"We have a lot of farmers who are paying fair wages, and who are stepping up and making sure that workers are protected," McClure says. "However, we do have some bad actors out there that have really exploited this loophole and this exclusion that we have had in our code."
The Department of Labor and Industry says it will need two more employees to investigate more than 300 claims a year.
