Farm workers should be as protected by state law as other workers. Credit: Newsday/John Paraskevas
When the federal Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 was introduced by President Franklin Roosevelt, the bill’s 25-cents-per-hour minimum wage and overtime pay for working more than 44 hours per week included all employees, even those toiling on farms. But opposition from politicians representing agricultural districts, particularly in the South, carved farmworkers out of the bill. Though numerous — there were about 12 million farm laborers in 1938 compared with 3 million today — these workers had little political power, and were sacrificed to get the broader bill passed.
New York's laws should have long ago placed the same overtime requirements on farms as other employers, but only lately has there been improvement. Two years ago, the state reduced the number of hours before overtime was required to be paid from 80 hours per week to 60. Now the state’s Farm Labor Wage Board has recommended to the state’s commissioner of labor that the bar be reduced to 40 hours, as for nearly all other jobs, gradually over 10 years.
The arguments against treating farmworkers like other workers are neither new nor insignificant. New York's farmers argue the industry is so seasonal, the need for labor so sporadically intense, the profit margins so thin, and competition from other regions and nations so stiff that they can’t afford to pay the extra wages. And they say that if they cut workers’...
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