State Senator Tom O’Mara
It wasn’t long ago in this column — in early September in fact – that I asked the question, “Will Governor Hochul turn her back on farmers?”
I asked it after a New York State Wage Board, established under a 2019 law known as the “Farmworkers Fair Labor Practices Act,” finalized its recommendation to lower the mandatory overtime pay threshold for farm workers from the current 60 hours to 40 hours.
Following the Wage Board’s action, Governor Hochul was given 45 days to send down the final word.
It didn’t take long to get our answer. The governor herself didn’t do the dirty work, of course. She turned that over to state Labor Commissioner Roberta Reardon, a holdover from the former Cuomo administration, who late on the afternoon of Friday, October 1, sent down the Hochul administration’s decision to lower the threshold to 40.
But this is all on Governor Hochul now, be clear on that, it is her decision and the consequences of moving forward with it will always be pinned to her.
Remember that it was on September 6 that the three-member Wage Board finalized its recommendation, by a vote of 2-1, to lower the threshold. The lone vote in opposition came from Board member David Fisher, President of the New York Farm Bureau, who said that “the deck was stacked” against the farm community from the outset of this process and that the board’s final report “does not reflect the data, research and scope of the full testimony that was provided” in opposition.
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