Following California's Lead Part 1

I'm Bob Larson. It's about time the state of Washington minds its own shop and stops taking cues from the latest regulations on agriculture in California.

That's according to Washington Policy Center's Ag Research Director Madi Clark who says We've followed suit in several ways, beginning with Break Time Rest Pay for workers in 2015 ...

MADI CLARK ... "And then we quickly followed with agricultural unions, and now paid sick leave that we passed a couple of weeks ago with Initiative-1433. But finally, we're looking at California and they, at the beginning of September, removed their overtime exemption for agriculture. In Washington, we still have that and that is one example that we definitely should not follow because our state agriculture system would be hurt. But not only would agriculture as a whole be hurt, but the worker's standard of living would go down because the hours they would work and most likely decrease and so their take home pay overall by the end of the season would be less."

Clark says we both may be big agriculture powers, but we're also very different in the types of crops we grow and our seasons ...

MADI CLARK ... "But we kind of follow that example of, "Oh, California did it, we want to do it too," instead of stepping back and going, "What would be best for agriculture, what would be best for Washington state, and what would be best for our workers and their families in providing for them."

Listen tomorrow and hear more about the dangers of allowing California to lead in our agriculture policies