In California, sheep herders earn $2,311.24 per month. They are required to be at the job site 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. That comes out to $533 per week, or $3.17 per hour. Senator Anna Caballero and Senator Melissa Hurtado have joined forces with the Farm Bureau to demand that these workers never receive overtime pay. Time and one-half pay would be $4.76---34% of California's basic minimum wage.

Since 1989 I have visited hundreds of sheepherders in the miserable trailers that the growers assign them to live in. They were like ovens in the summer on the valley floor or in the Mojave Desert, and refrigerators in the winter. Central California Legal Services, Inc., working with former sheepherders, produced two studies that brought national and international attention to sheepherders' exploitation.

The first study, "Suffering in the Pastures of Plenty: Experiences of H-2A Sheepherders in California's Central Valley", became the catalyst for the passage of the first law in the nation providing very basic labor law protections for sheepherders. Former sheepherders lobbied members of the legislature to urge them to demonstrate compassion for those still working as sheepherders.

The second study, "Watching Sheep and Waiting for Justice" documented the failure of the state of California to enforce the minimum protections in the legislation that the sheepherders won.  Now, Senators Caballero and Hurtado seek to  nullify some of those protections.