AUGUSTA, Maine — Progressives pushed a bill that would put farmworkers under state wage and overtime laws through the Maine House of Representatives in a narrow Wednesday vote, advancing a labor cause that still faces obstacles.
It would be a major shift for the state’s agriculture industry but risks a showdown between Democratic lawmakers and Gov. Janet Mills. She vetoed a bill last year that would allow farmworkers to collectively bargain. House Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross, D-Portland, proposed a similar bill this year along with the wage and overtime change.
The Democratic-led House voted 73-71 to endorse the measure, which would put farmworkers under Maine’s annually indexed minimum wage of $13.80 per hour and allow them to benefit from overtime laws that mandate 1 1/2 for hours worked over the 40-hour workweek, something supporters have framed as a racial justice issue in an industry reliant on migrants.
“These folks gather in the food that we eat,” Rep. Nina Milliken, D-Blue Hill, said at the end of a floor speech that she mostly delivered in Spanish. “They give us life.”
Maine is one of 19 states that does not apply its minimum wage laws to most farmworkers, according to the National Agricultural Law Center. This is in part because they are not classified as employees under state law, remaining subject to the $7.25 federal hourly minimum wage and left out of mandatory overtime laws.
Both this measure and the collective bargaining one have been hotly contested by...
The Newsboys’ federal lawsuit is pushing back strongly against past allegations that a woman was raped by a Newsboys lighting technician and it asserts that the report was false and contradicted b...