§ 780.502 Legislative history of exemption.

The exemption for shade-grown tobacco workers was added to the Act by the Fair Labor Standards Amendments of 1961. The intent of the committee which inserted the provision in the amendments which were reported to the House (see H. Rept. No. 75, 87th Cong., first sess., p. 29) was to exclude from the minimum wage and overtime requirements of the Act “employees engaged prior to the stemming process in processing shade-grown tobacco for use as cigar wrapper tobacco, but only if the employees were employed in the growing and harvesting of such tobacco”. The Report also pointed out that “such operations were assumed to be exempt prior to the case of Mitchell v. Budd, 350 U.S. 473 (1956), as a continuation of the agricultural process occurring in the vicinity where the tobacco was grown”. The original provision in the House-passed bill was in the form of an amendment to the Act's definition of agriculture. In that form, it would have altered the effect of the Supreme Court's decision in the case of Mitchell v. Budd, cited above, by bringing the described employees under the exemption provided for agriculture in section 13(a)(6) of the Act. (H. Rept. No. 75, p. 26, and H. Rept. No. 327, p. 17, 87th Cong., first sess.) The Conference Committee, in changing the provision to provide a separate exemption, made it clear that it was “not intended by the committee of conference to change * * * by the exemption for employees engaged in the named operations on shade-grown tobacco the application of the Act to any other employees. Nor is it intended that there be any implication of disagreement by the conference committee with the principles and tests governing the application of the present agricultural exemption as enunciated by the courts.” (H. Rept. No. 327, supra, p. 18.)