Human Resource Blog

Are Horse Farms Exempt From Paying Overtime?

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An employee was offered a job on a horse farm. It involved working  12 hours per day, 5 days a week. After 4 days on the job, the foreman said the employee needed to work 68 hours over 6 days per week, at $9.50 per hour. At another farm, the employee worked 55 hours per week at $10 per hour, but was paid overtime.  There is a poster in the break room that says any time over 40 hours must be a time-and-a-half. Are horse farms exempt from paying overtime? 

The Fair Labor Standards Act or FLSA is the federal law that sets the minimum wage and overtime regulations. In general, farms and agricultural enterprises are exempt from the overtime provisions of the FLSA.

Some farms are also exempt from the minimum wage provisions of the FLSA – meaning they can pay workers less than the federal minimum wage.

Most states have a minimum wage, and many also have an overtime law. However, many states exempt agricultural enterprises – farms – from those laws.

The FLSA requires that employees be paid at least $5.85 per hour, and that workers be paid 1.5 times their usual hourly rate for additional hours, in excess of 40 hours per week.

Small farms are specifically excluded from both the overtime and minimum wage provisions of the FLSA. The regulations are complex. For example, a farm that employs workers less than 500 “man-days” per quarter is exempt. That’s the equivalent of about 7 or 8 people, working 5-day weeks. A far where laborers hand-harvest a crop, and are paid a piece rate is also exempt.

Again, some of these farms must comply with state overtime laws, however, a number of states specifically exclude businesses in the agricultural industry from such laws.

The FLSA specifically excludes all businesses engaged in agriculture from the overtime provisions. Part of the definition given for agriculture is a business engaged in raising “livestock, bees, poultry or fur-bearing animals.” Horses would definitely qualify as livestock, so horse farms in most cases are exempt from the law.

Just for future reference, the FLSA applies to businesses with revenue of $500,000 per year or more.

The FLSA also applies to employees who are engaged in interstate commerce. At a toy factory, an employee who orders products from an out-of-state vendor, or a sales person who travels around the country trying to sell toys, would qualify as a worker engaged in interstate commerce. Both of these employees would be covered under the FLSA. Even employees who regularly send mail out of state or answer long-distance calls are engaged in interstate commerce.

However, an employee who manufactured toys from local products, to be sold only within the same state, would probably not be engaged in interstate commerce. That employee would not be covered under the FLSA.

Please post another question mentioning your state for a more specific answer.