The Southeast Freeze
To begin, our condolences go out to the Georgia farmers who suffered from the deep freeze in the prior weeks that resulted in multiple customers losing their entire crop for this year’s upcoming harvest. The week of March 12-19 resulted in brutal temperatures in the low twenties and even the high teens in portions of the South, which resulted in catastrophic crop loss throughout the region. Many farmers tried taking desperate measures such as spreading torches, heaters, commercial blowers, and sprinklers, but most of their efforts failed. Blueberries are Georgia’s number one fruit/nut crop, and the harvest was valued at over a $300 million dollar in 2020. Catastrophic events such as the recent freeze can destroy the agricultural economy in a state overnight. 2nd Sight is here for support. Please do not hesitate to contact one of us if there is something that we can do to help.
Overtime
As we all know, Washington overtime laws are in full affect, and only going to get more difficult for employers. The overtime threshold is 55 hours a week this year and will drop to 48 hours a week next year and will settle at 40 hours a week at the beginning of 2024. In addition to Washington, Oregon is now moving forward with its changes to overtime regulations for agricultural workers as well. Oregon’s overtime threshold will be cut down to 55 hours a week in 2023 and then will taper down to 40 hours a week by the beginning of 2027. California’s overtime requirement for agricultural workers is even stricter. California farms that employ more than 25 workers must now pay their workers overtime after 8 hours of work in a day or 40 hours worked in a week. Farms that employ 25 or fewer workers must pay overtime after 9.5 hours worked in a day or 55 in a week, moving toward an 8/40 requirement in 2025. California farms that employ more than 25 workers must now pay their workers overtime after 8 hours of work in a day or 40 hours worked in a week.
As soon as Washington announced these new overtime laws, 2nd Sight’s customers immediately reached out with their concerns, and rightfully so. Because our focus is solving our customers’ problem, it did not take us long to realize that 2ndSight, a company who offers labor tracking software, needed to do focus on flagging employees who were nearing overtime thresholds. Our team immediately got to work using a mix of brainstormed ideas from our tech developers and recommendations from our customer base. In the last couple of weeks, we have developed a beta of our overtime feature that is now being evaluated and in its final stages before we launch it for full use.
Adopting New Technology
We understand that it can be difficult to introduce innovative technologies that you may not be accustomed to, but 2nd Sight’s easy-to-use technologies that can help you get ahead of the new rules and regulations that are being adopted. 2nd Sight can help you roll out these technologies. We are here to try to make the transition to tracking technologies as smooth as possible, and we will do all we can to accomplish that goal. For those customers in Washington and Oregon, please reach out if you need in person training or help, A 2-3-hour drive on a beautiful spring day has never made us complain. For our overseas and East-Coast customers, we offer a 24/7 customer service hotline for your convenience.