I just heard that U.S. minimum wage laws do not apply to farm laborers – and this is why deperately poor migrant workers are so attractive to farmers in the U.S. Is this true or not?
No, ag workers are covered just like everyone else (some exceptions).
Whether they actually receive the money they are “paid” is another story. The migrant worker business is really ugly.
But yes, they are covered by minimum wage laws.
They are covered by minimum wage laws. But they are exempt from overtime laws. (I know–my wife works at a winery, and, with the crush on, is on day 9 of about 28 straight days of work with only one scheduled day off.)
Desperately poor migrant workers are generally not US citizens. While federal minimum wage laws do apply to them, since they’re paid under the table, enforcement is next to impossible.
There are two cases that I know of where Federal Minimum Wage does not apply. First, for waiters and certain other employees who earn most of their money through tips, the actual hourly wage can be as low as $2.31 . Second, certain employees who are still in training can be paid a lower rate of $4.75 per hour, though most states no longer allow this.
How’s this?
Looks like there’s a lot of wiggle room for being excepted.
Another category of ag workers exempt from a lot of Federal laws are Haitian cane workers who are brought into Florida each year. Those poor guys are horribly abused.
Didn’t know about that – from what federal laws are they exempted? And why?
Here are some links regarding “Guest Workers”.
http://migration.ucdavis.edu/rmn/more.php?id=488_0_3_0
http://www.fwjustice.org/GWbasics.htm
http://www.fwjustice.org/h-2a_summary.htm
Google on terms like H-2, H-2A, H-2B and such.
(The articles I first found indicated that Jamaicans, rather than Haitians, did the bulk of Florida cane cutting, but that’s not how I remember it. Fortunately, the cane cutting was mechanized in FL in the late 1990s so there’s less of it. Now NC leads the nation in such “Guest Workers”.)