A New York state board is deciding whether to lower the ag worker overtime threshold from 60 hours to 40 hours.
It’s hard enough to farm and try to make a living. It’s even harder when you have employees and you have no idea how much you’re supposed to pay them, or how many employees you need to do the job.
Yet this is the kind of uncertainty New York state farmers must deal with year after year as they wait for the Farm Laborer Wage Board to make up its mind on whether to lower the state’s ag worker overtime threshold from 60 hours to 40 hours.
For a little background, under the Farm Laborers Fair Labor Practices Act, which was signed into law in 2019, farm laborers became entitled to overtime premium pay starting Jan. 1, 2020, if they worked more than 60 hours per week. They were also entitled to one day off per week.
The act also created the Farm Laborers Wage Board to hold hearings and make recommendations on overtime work and, specifically, the extent to which the overtime threshold for workers could be lowered below 60 hours per week.
Hearings were held in 2020, and the 60-hour threshold remained in place. The board was supposed to reconvene in 2021 and issue a decision by Dec. 15 on whether to lower the threshold. But the deadline came and went, and now a series of new hearings is being held to get testimony on whether to lower it.
The first hearing was held last week and lasted three hours, with farm owners, farmworkers and others testifying in front of the...
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