ALBANY — Farm workers are being paid more under a year-old, 60-hour overtime threshold, but farm owners said they are worried that bringing their laborers in line with the rest of the industry by instituting a 40-hour work week would put them out of business, according to a state-commissioned study by Cornell University.
The study's conclusions are being heavily promoted by the agricultural industry while also drawing criticism from advocates for the 40-hour work week, who contend the findings are flawed. The state Department of Agriculture commissioned the study in April — at a cost of up to $100,000 — to "understand how these labor laws change the cost of production and competitiveness of New York agricultural industries."
The report sampled 40 farms that the university said it had prior relationships with and the data reflected commercial farms of a certain size that would use Farm Credit East, a group that is also aligned with the agricultural industry. The university declined to provide a copy of blank questionnaires it used to gather inputs from farmers and their employees, asserting that doing so would be a breach of confidentiality and would compromise future research.
"The data about what happened over the first year of implementation seems to me to tell a pretty good story and that's even from a report that seems to be going out of its way to not tell a good story," said David Dyssegaard Kallick, director of the Immigration Research Initiative.
The state...
BreakingNews Sarma further accused the TMC of allowing cattle smuggling to Bangladesh to continue for vested interests. Published on: Guwahati: Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Thursday ...