Retroactive overtime for farmworkers is an uncalled for expensive fiction

OLYMPIA – Imagine paying off the mortgage to your home in full and on time. Then, a month later, receiving a letter from the bank outlining an additional three years of payments owed because the bank decided your interest rate changed after you’d paid your mortgage off.

That is the discussion playing out in agriculture during this legislative session. Instead of mortgage it is farmworker wages, and instead of interest rates, it is the seeking of additional wages related to a court case.

Substitute Senate Bill 5172 would require all agricultural employers to pay three years of overtime for empl...