FARM WAGES WOES
Assemblymembers, farm owners voice concerns on lowering of OT threshold
ALBANY, N.Y. » Members of the New York State Assembly and farm owners held a Zoom meeting to discuss the recent order issued by New York State Department of Labor Commissioner Roberta Reardon, to lower the present 60-hour threshold for overtime pay to 40 hours per week by Jan. 1, 2032, allowing 10 years to phase in the new threshold.
The Board included its recommendation in a report that the Board voted to advance to the Commissioner during its final meeting on Sept. 6, 2022, following a two-year process and 14 public meetings and hearings. Following a rulemaking process to enact the Commissioner’s Order, farm work in excess of 40 hours per week would be required to be compensated at overtime rates, as it is in other occupations.
Both parties voiced their concerns about the decision and how it could potentially impact family farms and consumers.
Assemblymember Carrie Woerner (D-Round Lake) spoke about her concerns that lowering the overtime threshold will impact the viability of small family farms in her district and across the state.
“Saratoga and Washington counties are home to 1,440 farms as of the last agricultural census and probably we’ve lost a few since then. Our farms are not large factory farms like you fly over in the middle part of the country. Our farms are family-owned and family-run operations. They’re the kind of places where the next generation goes out in the morning before they go to school and does their farm chores and when they get home from school in the afternoon it is the farm chores that take precedence before they do homework or play video games,” Woerner stated.
“Farming is hard work, it’s hard work for everybody on the farm. But it’s different work, it’s not the same as factory work, it’s not the same as warehouse work, it’s not the same thing as retail work. For many years we recognized the differences between agricultural work and those other categories of work in the way we treated overtime hours, in the way we treated the number of hours that an individual would get paid for and how they would get paid on the farms,” Woerner explained on the differences between farming and other industries.
“Through the farm worker bill a number of years ago we changed
many things about how we treated agricultural workers under the labor law. The 60-hour overtime threshold was negotiated as part of that and it was a negotiation and a recognition of what was both fair and reasonable for all the parties concerned,” Woerner added.
Her colleague, Assemblymember John T. McDonald III RPh (D-Cohoes), noted the negative fallout being a lack of fresh, healthy, locally farmed foods, especially for people in urban areas of his district.
“My main concern is this has the potential, even with the labor credit, to put small farms out of business. Additionally, those who work in this industry know that the weather can wreak havoc and whereas most businesses can regulate their work to a degree, that is not the case in the farming community,” McDonald III said.
“It’ll make healthy food choices out of reach for more individuals and those who can afford it, more money out of their pockets,” McDonald III added.
Town of New Scotland Supervisor Doug LaGrange, who used to own and work on a family dairy farm until 2019, remarked on some of the hardships facing family farms.
“We’re the farms that are going out of business because of the cost. You know you go from a tractor of $200,000 dollars today and some of the other things that we deal with is just so hard to keep your infrastructure going to a level that you can take good care of the animals and be in a healthy work environment,” LaGrange remarked.
“You’re talking four days’ worth of work, five hours in the morning and five at night, then we have to find out what we can do for those other three days and it just doesn’t pencil out, it just won’t work. I appreciate the tax credit thought and attempt, the state often has things like this that might be an answer or softer blow but even with our narrow margins if we could afford it now and get it back later, I don’t think it’ll happen,” LaGrange continued regarding the unique nature of the farming business.
“The work ethic of the dairy farm is so different as mentioned before, you’re not gonna recreate that down the road. Once you break this, you’re not gonna fix it. I’m very worried about our food supply,” LaGrange added.
Shawna Papale, who owns Candella’s Farm and Greenhouses, outside of Utica, echoed many of the sentiments voiced by LaGrange.
“From 2019 to 2020 we saw a 20 percent jump in prices from 2021 to 2022 we saw a 23 percent jump in prices and the price that we can get has not changed. We go sell a box of tomatoes, we’re in competition with that larger farm, the mass farm that’s selling the box of tomatoes to Walmart where the price is set by the Philly market or the Boston market or the market out of New York City, it’s still the same and we’re told what we can charge,” Papale remarked.
“To go to the 60 hours was a challenge. We saw that in the change of our payroll. To go to 40 hours and even in a step down it was going to be tremendous,” Papale continued.
“My biggest fear there is we have to reduce the number or hours these people work, they’re gonna say well I’m gonna go work in another state where I’m not gonna be confined to the number of hours I can work. Our workers wanna work seven days a week,” Papale noted.
Papale also voiced her concern regarding the future of family farms moving forward.
“We all should be afraid of what’s going to happen 10 years from now. Where are you going to get your produce? We’re losing farmland to development. We’re losing good product that we take for granted that we’re going to walk into the store and buy,” Papale said.
“I’ll go in during the winter and pick up a package of berries and I used to just put it in the cart and walk around. I now stop and say where’s this from? When you’re buying produce from a South American country, you better stop and look because if it’s coming from a country that’s not regulated with what pesticides and other things they’re putting on that product, we all better pause. The example everybody says is are you buying your garlic from China? Don’t. You don’t know what’s on that product and 10 years from now that’s what we’re going to be faced with,” Papale added.