Fairness for farm workers

The purpose of a 40-hour week and the requirement of time and a half overtime pay for that 41st hour and beyond is to compensate employees for the extra hardships of their longer labor. It’s been a matter of federal law since Congress and FDR adopted the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938. But farm workers were exempted back then because Jim Crow Southern senators and congressmen didn’t want Black field hands to have the same benefit being granted to everyone else.

The exclusion of farm workers from OT still exists in U.S. law, but New York, in 2019, finally extended overtime to agricultural employees, but cruelly set the threshold at 60 hours a week. The decision to lower the number was left to a Wage Board under the state Department of Labor.

A year ago, two members of that board, Denis Hughes, former president of the New York State AFL-CIO and Brenda McDuffie, the longtime leader of Buffalo Urban League, seemed poised to support a phased reduction down to 40 hours, as California has done. The Golden State’s final step, down to 40 hours, just happened on Jan. 1 for farms employing 26 or more workers. Smaller farms are now at 55 hours and will drop to 40 in three years.

But at the last moment McDuffie switched and sided with David Fisher, head of Farm Bureau growers’ lobby, and voted to postpone any action in New York for another year.

Today begins a new round of hearings by the same Wage Board members on the same question of lowering the OT threshold from 60. All that’s changed is that field hands have gone yet another harvest season without being treated equally.

The Farm Bureau’s arguments about ag’s need for long hours to “make hay while the sun shines” doesn’t exempt them from OT, as other industries with long hours or continuous work have OT. The same for seasonal or even weather-dependent occupations. They all have the same 40-hour rule and they make it work.