Farmers across New York State, including Otsego County, are speaking out in opposition as a New York State Department of Labor Farm Laborers’ Wage Board considers lowering the threshold at which farm workers earn overtime pay from 60 hours per week to 40, a move farmers say will devastate their businesses.
Farmers went to Albany Wednesday, December 1, to deliver letters to Governor Kathy Hochul opposing the move and urging the Wage Board to keep the 60-hour overtime week.
The Farm Laborers Fair Practice Act, signed into law by former New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo, statutorily reduced the weekly overtime threshold from 80 hours to 60 beginning January 1, 2020. The law also included workers’ compensation, one day of rest during the calendar week, unemployment insurance, disability, and the right to organize.
A provision included in the law authorizes the Department of Labor to convene a Wage Board to revisit lowering the required hours for overtime periodically. Citing concern over the pandemic-related recession, the Wage Board last year voted down the proposed reduction to a 40-hour overtime mark but agreed to meet this year between November 1 and December 15 to reconsider.
Farmers in Otsego County argue that a reduction in the overtime threshold demonstrates poor understanding of how the farm industry works and fear an “exorbitantly negative impact” on already thin and highly weather-dependant profit margins.
Darin Hickling, Otsego County Farm Bureau Vice President...
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