Harvest of justice

We often blame Albany legislators for setting aside too little time to debate bills, but today’s debate on farmworkers’ rights in the Capitol started on March 25, 1911. That was when the Triangle Shirtwaist fire took the lives of 146 Jewish and Italian immigrants, mostly girls and women, who were locked in.

The atrocity roused the Legislature, which, under the enlightened leadership of Speaker Al Smith and Senate Leader Robert F. Wagner, pushed through the very first workplace guarantees anywhere, with the promise that employees would be protected.

Then, Smith, Wagner and two other New Yorkers — Frances Perkins and Franklin D. Roosevelt — extended that promise and built on those wage and hour laws, taking the cause from Albany to Washington, culminating in the federal Wagner Act of 1935, enshrining the right to organize and bargain collectively. New York’s Little Wagner Act two years later did the same.

But the promise of those breakthrough statutes excluded farmworkers because, back then, farmworkers were black.

More than 80 years later, the successors to Smith and Wagner can redeem the promise that the government will protect people. All people.

The Farmworkers’ Fair Labor Practices Act, stalled for decades, will today be on the floor of the Assembly and Senate. Framed by the Senate’s Siena marble arches and red Scottish granite pillars, will ring the cry for equality. Underneath the Assembly’s chandeliers and echoing off the marble and carved mahogany, will rise the call for justice.

The bill this page has championed for decades has been amended and does not treat them equally. But after more than 80 years outside of the law’s embrace, they would no longer be excluded.

Field hands would have the right to organize and bargain collectively. But uniquely for the private sector, they would be denied the right to strike. In exchange, they would have an easier path to organizing and winning a fair contract.

Eight decades after all other employees won the right to overtime pay, farmworkers would finally get it, not at 40 hours a week, but at 60. That threshold will be later reviewed, with the goal of lowering it. And they’ll get an unpaid day off.

Every member should vote with their heart and conscience. Should it pass, credit will be duly noted. For now we praise those long-dead leaders and the excluded farmworkers who fed, and feed, us all.