Bitter harvest

Yes, today is a legal holiday. Yes, today COVID is as widespread and deadly as ever. And yes, today is just another very long day of backbreaking labor for farm workers, particularly for the thousands who tend to cows at industrial dairies or work under glass at huge greenhouses.

But even though they’re on the job today, unlike most of us whom they feed, they are also unlike every other employee in this great state, as field hands don’t earn time-and-a-half overtime pay after 40 hours a week.

They, and they alone, only qualify for OT after 60 hours, which really means that they don’t get overtime and a normal work week might be 55 hours at straight time.

The Farm Laborers Wage Board was legally charged to consider lowering the threshold from 60 hours, but two members of the panel, David Fisher, president of the anti-worker Farm Bureau growers’ lobby, and Brenda McDuffie, the longtime head of the Buffalo Urban League, refused to consider anything and voted late Thursday afternoon for a new Board to start again at the end of this year.

Denis Hughes, the former president of the New York State AFL-CIO, wanted to begin lowering the hourly level in two years and equalize it at 40 hours a decade f rom now. But no, said McDuffie, apparently under orders from someone, siding against people claiming that she “wants to hear more from workers.”

Hear what? That f arm work is onerous? That they toil until their bodies break? That premium pay has been the law for more than 80 years for all but them? Wasn’t she listening this year past of hearings?

Today begins the new Legislature and unless Labor Commissioner Roberta Reardon overrides the Board, lawmakers must write 40 into law.