Volume 6, Number 1, Winter-Spring 1997
In April 1997, the California Industrial Welfare Commission amended the state's overtime regulations to require that, in some nonagricultural occupations and industries, overtime be paid only after 40 hours in a week, rather than after 8 hours in a day, as is currently mandated. The amended regulation, which takes effect January 1, 1998, brings state overtime regulations into conformance with federal rules. It covers manufacturing (Wage Order No. 1-89); hotels, restaurants, and hospitals (5-89); retail, wholesale, and sales (7-80); transportation (9-90); and mechanical, clerical, technical, and professional occupations (4-89). Employees covered under Wage Order 4-89 include bookkeepers, clerks, computer programmers, secretaries, and typists.
Workers covered by Wage Orders 14-80 (agricultural occupations), 8-80 (handling products after harvest), 13-80 (preparing agricultural products on the farm for market), and 3-80 (canning, freezing, and preserving industry) remain unaffected by the Commission's adoption of a more flexible work-week. Wage Order 3-80 applies to any industry, business, or establishment operated for the purpose of canning soups, or of cooking, curing, freezing, pickling, salting, bottling, preserving or otherwise processing any seafood, meat, poultry, rabbit product, or fruits or vegetables (including manufacture of fruit juice concentrates), when the purpose of processing is the preservation of the product. All operations incidental to that preservation are included.
What may become confusing is that, after the change in overtime rules becomes effective in the nonagricultural industries mentioned above, workers in industries handling and preserving agricultural products after harvest must still receive overtime pay after 8 hours per day; those in agricultural occupations, after 10 hours per day.