Fired farmworker pursuing justice
Fighting Supreme Court law against unionizing, advocate appeals ruling on lawsuit
When Crispin Hernandez asked for a day off to meet with labor rights advocates, he was demoted from a regular cow milker to an odd jobs worker at a dairy farm in Lewis County. When he met with co-workers and advocates to discuss how to organize for better working conditions, the farmer’s son called the police. When he distributed fliers to rally workers, he was fired.
As a farmworker, Hernandez was denied a day off, overtime pay and the chance to collective bargaining — rights granted to New York employees but not farmworkers under an 80-year-old law. Hernandez sued in New York Supreme Court in Albany County in an unprecedented case. The lawsuit was dismissed in January because the judge said the law wasn’t discriminatory and didn’t cover farmworkers. Hernandez appealed in June and won’t stop fighting in court until workers can unionize.
“Farmworkers don’t have any assurance that they can organize to protect their rights in the workplace,” Hernandez told the Times Union in a phone interview. “They (farmers) don’t give
them workplace training and tell them their rights. They keep them secluded and shaded from the public view and in a slavelike relationship. They’re more concerned in the well-being of the cows than the workers themselves.”
A majority of New York farmworkers are migrants who sometimes speak little English or lack legal immigration status, which makes them vulnerable to exploitation. Hernandez said many workers face wage theft, subpar housing, physical assaults and unsafe conditions like working with toxic chemicals.
Hernandez, 23, immigrated to New York six years ago to support his family in Mexico. He doesn’t work in agriculture anymore and now lives in the Syracuse area where he’s active with the Workers’ Center of Central New York, whose advocates he met before he was fired.
Hernandez’s lawsuit argued farmworkers should be included under a section of the New York Constitution that gives employees the right to unionize. It also said the law excluding farmworkers from unionizing is discriminatory because when it was enacted most workers were black. If they can prove the law was discriminatory, it’s invalidated, said Erin Beth Harrist, attorney with the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) representing Hernandez.
When the case was filed in 2016, Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration said it didn’t want to fight the case and affirmed farmworkers’ right to organize. Instead, the New York Farm Bureau asked the court if it could step in to defend the law.
Last week, the Farm Bureau, responding to Hernandez’s appeal, said it opposes collective bargaining because it would hinder seasonal work and burden small businesses, according to court documents. The bureau reported 99 percent of New York’s estimated 35,000 farms are “characterized as family farms.”
Steve Ammerman, New York Farm Bureau public affairs manager, said the industry couldn’t support new labor costs like paying for overtime or days off because of low milk prices.
“New York Farm Bureau is supportive of a voluntary day of rest for farmworkers, but labor activists have refused to support legislation,” Ammerman wrote to the Times Union in an email.
Harrist said many businesses may be family owned but are still large. Jose Chapa, the Justice for Farmworkers Legislative Campaign Coordinator, said the agriculture lobby has successfully steered the state Legislature from passing protections for farmworkers. The Farmworkers Fair Labor Practices Act has been introduced for two decades but never passed by both the Assembly and the Senate.
Lisa Zucker, working on NYCLU’S legislative campaign, said changes could be introduced slowly —like phasing in overtime pay or prohibiting strikes during harvests — without keeping all farmworkers from unionizing.
“If we ever want to have equality for farmworkers and to cure this exploitation and racial injustice, we’re talking about systemic change,” Zucker said.