“We don’t want overtime!” chanted nearly 300 farmworkers on the steps of the Washington State Capitol in Olympia. “Overtime will not be paid! We want more HOURS!”

Their shouts echoed throughout the day across the Capitol campus, turning heads and even causing one lawmaker to lean out an open window of the Capitol building for a testy exchange with the demonstrating farmworkers.

But this was back in 2024. Since then, WA lawmakers have blocked not one, but four proposals to grant the farmworkers’ simple request: allow them to pick up more “straight-time” hours during farming’s busy season, rather than strictly following the state’s new farm overtime law that’s led to reduced incomes for tens of thousands of workers.

A chief backer of this inflexibility is State Sen. Rebecca Saldaña, who was instrumental in killing both proposals– the most recent being Senate Bill 5487–that would’ve allowed workers some relief from the rigid new overtime rules.

Interestingly, Saldaña has a background in labor activism, and has positioned herself as a champion of farmworkers in the state legislature. Yet in 2024 and again in 2025, the Senator refused to meet with farmworkers asking for overtime flexibility.

Now, after farmworkers and their supporters sent hundreds of messages to Saldaña and her Senate Labor and Commerce Committee colleagues complaining about the lack of overtime flexibility and asking them to support SB 5487, the Senator is falling back on the same platitudes she used to promote the flawed farm overtime law nearly a half-decade ago.

‘Fairly compensating’ workers was Saldaña’s argument when she helped pass the farm overtime legislation back in 2021. But since then, thousands of WA farmworkers have reported making less money following the change, and academic studies in both California and Oregon–which have made similar farm overtime changes–have confirmed those anecdotal reports, tracking a clear correlation between inflexible farm overtime rules and reduced farmworker incomes.

In response to farmworkers’ Feb. 2025 messages, Saldaña appears to be stuck in 2021. “I do not support SB 5487. Farmworkers, like all workers, deserve to be fairly compensated for their time,” she wrote, directly opposing the workers’ request, and denying the growing body of evidence showing the inflexible new law harming their incomes.

Apparently, Saldaña believes that ‘fairly compensating’ farmworkers means reducing their income and forcing them to pick up additional jobs to feed their families, because that’s what the farmworkers she claims to champion are reporting as the result of the law she pushed. “I understand the concerns behind SB 5487,” she wrote, but her response to the concerned farmworkers’ messages then proceeded to lecture about how the overtime law works, and why their desire to achieve relief through overtime flexibility is wrong.

Clearly, the workers Saldaña decided to lecture are keenly aware of how the overtime law works. They’re undeniably interested in fair compensation for themselves and their co-workers. And obviously they know what overtime flexibility would mean for them and their families.

Not only is the Senator’s response tone deaf, it’s patronizing toward a vulnerable community reaching out for relief from the burden her political idealism has placed on them.

If Saldaña wants to continue positioning herself as an advocate for farmworkers, she should begin actually listening to their voices. Agreeing to meet face-to-face would be a good start.