On Friday, the New York State Farm Laborer Wage Board took a giant leap in recommending a reduction in the amount of hours farm workers need to work before clocking overtime. Farmers often work long hours just to put food on their table and hours.
“No farms, no food and a law like this is going to put a lot of farmers out of business,” says New York State Assemblyman Chris Tague (R,C,I-Schoharie).
A 2019 law required that the overtime threshold be lowered to 60 hours a week from 80. This went into effect in 2020. Now, with a recommendation from the Farm Laborer Wage Board, over the next ten years, that threshold will be reduced to 40. “I think our recommendations are based on the best outcome. There are no winners or losers,” says Wage Board Chair Brenda McDuffie.
Assemblyman Tague, a former dairy farmer himself, says there are clear losers, and it is the farm owners, saying this new rule will leave a lot of fields unattended. “You know, some of these folks want to work as many hours as they possibly can,” Tague explains, “the problem is and this is what people don’t understand, if this law goes into effect, they’re (farm owners) not going to allow their employees to work over 40 hours a week because they can’t afford to pay them overtime.”
Tague says another concern of his is farm workers leaving New York State for jobs elsewhere, where overtime hours are not restricted. “I don’t think they (farm workers) will be laid off, I think what they’ll do is they’ll move to other...
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