Sponsors (14)
The bill increases pay and extends labor protections for many farmworkers while imposing higher costs and compliance burdens on employers that could raise food prices or reduce hours and hiring in the agricultural sector.
Farmworkers will receive overtime pay (time-and-a-half) for hours worked beyond phased weekly thresholds, increasing take-home pay for many agricultural employees.
More non-immediate relative farmworkers gain basic labor protections by narrowing family-worker exemptions, reducing unpaid or underpaid work for those previously excluded.
Smaller agricultural employers get a three-year delayed phase-in for overtime rules, giving small-business owners time to adjust payroll, staffing, and operations and lowering immediate compliance costs.
Farm employers will face higher labor costs from mandated overtime pay, which could reduce farm profitability and put upward pressure on food prices.
Some employers may cut worker hours, reduce hiring, or accelerate mechanization to avoid overtime costs, potentially decreasing employment or hours for farmworkers and harming rural communities.
Staggered effective dates and changed exemptions create administrative complexity and compliance uncertainty, especially for employers near the 25-employee threshold.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Phases in FLSA overtime protections for agricultural employees and repeals several agricultural exemptions, with staged thresholds (55→50→45→40 hours) and delayed compliance for small employers.
Official title: Amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to provide increased labor law protections for agricultural workers, and for other purposes.
Introduced August 6, 2026 by Alejandro Padilla · Last progress August 6, 2026
Extends federal overtime pay protections to agricultural employees by adding a phased-in overtime requirement and removing several long-standing agricultural exemptions from the Fair Labor Standards Act. The bill requires time-and-a-half pay for farm workers who exceed progressively lower weekly hour thresholds from 2027 to 2030 (with a three-year delay for small employers), and narrows or repeals several statutory exemptions that previously excluded many farmworkers from FLSA overtime rules. The change phases in overtime thresholds yearly for larger employers and shifts each step three years later for employers with 25 or fewer employees. It also adjusts related migrant labor and family-worker exemptions so more agricultural employees become eligible for overtime pay over time, and makes conforming changes to related statutes.