Currently, farm workers in New York begin earning overtime after working 60 hours during a week.
In January, the state Farm Laborers Wage Board recommended that the number of hours before overtime kicks in be reduced from the current 60 hours to 40 hours, phased in over 10 years. The board will meet at 4:30 p.m. today to deliver its final report and vote on those recommendations.
The final decision is up to state Department of Labor Commissioner Roberta Reardon, who has 45 days after the board votes to reject, adopt or modify the recommendations.
The drop from 60 to 40 hours would take place over a decade, in increments of four hours every two years. The first drop would come Jan. 1, 2024, from 60 to 56 hours. The final 40-hour threshold would go into place Jan. 1, 2032.
Many farmers oppose the change, saying it will increase their labor costs at a time they can ill afford to incur new expenses.
“When you add time-and-a-half for 10 to 20 hours a week per employee, it is just not sustainable in this industry,” Skaneateles dairy farmer Marcus Richards wrote in guest column on syracuse.com. He said wages are his farm’s second-biggest expense, after feed costs.
Richards noted that dairy farmers can’t charge more because the government sets the price farmers are paid for milk.
Crop farmers who grow vegetables and apples say they would be particularly hard hit when extra seasonal labor is needed. They say higher overtime costs will make them less competitive with farms in other states.
Some seasonal farm workers say the change is long overdue for an estimated 55,000 agricultural workers in New York, many from Mexico, Guatemala and other countries outside the United States.
“We need a better quality of life,” veteran dairy worker Lazaro Alvarez told the Associated Press.
Farm workers in New York didn’t qualify for overtime pay at all until 2020, when the state changed the law to mandate extra pay for workers who exceeded 60 hours a week. The Farm Laborers Fair Labor Practices Act of 2019 also instructed a three-person “wage board” to consider whether to recommend a lower threshold.
Today’s meeting will be live-streamed on the laborers board website.
Large farms in California already have to pay overtime after 40 hours, and smaller farms will hit that mark in 2025. Washington state farm workers will reach the 40-hour threshold in 2024.
