Washington Supreme Court: Piece Rate Employees Deserve Hourly Salary

On Thursday, the Washington Supreme Court agreed with Attorney General Bob Ferguson that agricultural workers who are paid on a “piece-rate” basis are also entitled to hourly compensation for time they spend on other aspects of their jobs.

In a “friend of the court” brief filed in Carranza and Martinez v. Dovex Fruit Company, Ferguson argued that piece-rate workers deserve compensation for work-related activities other than picking, including traveling between orchards, attending meetings and trainings, or transporting or storing equipment.

“Employers must fairly compensate farmworkers for all of their work. Period,” Ferguson said. “I will continue to stand up for the legal rights of farmworkers.”

A majority of the Supreme Court agreed with Ferguson.

“An agricultural worker who is paid on a piece-rate basis for piece-rate picking work must be paid separate hourly compensation for the time he or she spends performing tasks outside of piece-rate picking work,” Justice Mary I. Yu wrote for the majority. That rate of pay, she continued, “must be at least the minimum wage or the agreed-upon rate, whichever is higher.”

As of 2015, there were nearly 100,000 agricultural workers in Washington state working on about 7.3 million acres statewide.

Many of those workers are paid on a piece-rate basis.

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