Farm labor bill is law
Ex & kids join gov to enact workers’ rights legislation
Gov. Cuomo signed a landmark farm labor bill into law on Wednesday — granting farmhands in the Empire State vast job protections and benefits they had been denied for decades.
The legislation, known as the Farmworkers Fair Labor Practices Act, affords farm employees in New York the right to unionize, collect overtime pay and take at least one day off per week.
Cuomo called the longstalled law a “milestone in the crusade for social justice.”
“As a practical matter, 100,000 farmworkers will have better lives,” he said during a signing ceremony at the Daily News newsroom in Manhattan. “Their families will have better lives. They will finally have the same protections that other workers have had for 80 years.” Farm laborers were exempted from a 1938 New York labor law that afforded basic labor and human rights to workers. Various incarnations of the bill have been repeatedly scuttled over the past 20 years as Republicans and the state’s Farm Bureau long resisted the measure.
The law gives farmworkers the right to receive overtime pay of one-and-a-half times their regular wages after they have worked more than 60 hours in a week.
They also have the right to one full day of rest per week, will be eligible for unemployment insurance and workers compensation coverage, and will be granted the right to organize to join a union and to collectively bargaining.
Cuomo was joined by longtime bill sponsor Assemblywoman Cathy Nolan and state Sen. Jessica Ramos, both Queens Democrats.
The signing was a family affair for the governor, as he crediting Kerry Kennedy, his exwife, for her longtime advocacy for farmworkers’ rights. He invoked his ex’s father, Robert F. Kennedy, for his work on the matter and applauded his own daughters for carrying on the family legacy.
“Kerry then enlisted our daughters, who went to Albany to protest and advocate for the bill’s passage every year,” he said.
Mariah and Cara stood nearby as their mother leaned down to give the governor a peck on the cheek as he signed the bill.
Cuomo also tipped his hat the The News’ editorial team for its unwavering support for the measure.
“The Daily News continued to hammer the wall of apathy and resistance until it crumbled,” he said.