Dealing with Piece Rate

Dealing with Piece Rate

Dealing with Piece Rate. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

The subject of piece-rate workers getting paid for their break time has been getting a lot of questions lately after the Washington State Supreme Court voted in favor of the break times. Now employers are trying to figure out how to deal with the issue. Dan Fazio with wafla explains.

FAZIO: Extra pay is required when workers are paid by piece-rate. Employers have to compensate piece-rate workers separately at this new term they call their regular hourly rate. Additionally the court ruled that rest breaks are mandatory even though the language of the regulation says that a rest break shall be allowed, the court said “shall be allowed” means you’ve got to make sure the guys take it.

This new ruling went into effect on July 16, the same day the ruling was made so now employers must comply.

FAZIO: Basically it’s a 6 step process where you first figure out how much they’re making while they’re working as opposed to how much they’re making while their resting. Then you multiply that amount they’re making while working times the amount of hours that they’re resting.

But Fazio says there are other ways around this issue.

FAZIO: The easiest way is to shift everyone to hourly and you get paid $10 an hour for working here and that’s what you get. The third way to comply is to shift to hourly plus a bonus. So you say I expect everyone to pick four bins of apples a day minimum. If you just pick your four bins of apples you’re going to get paid $10 an hour and that includes picking and resting time and then anyone who picks a fifth bin of apples you get a bonus of $20 a bin.

That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network of the West.

Previous ReportGroups Dealing With Ruling
Next ReportFruit Notes