Martina Marisol wakes up before dawn most days to get to work at 6 a.m., on a farm upstate. She often doesn’t get home until the late evening. Some weeks, she works up to 60 hours.
That schedule is typical for agricultural workers across New York State. But overtime only starts for farmworkers at 60 hours, compared to the standard 40 hour work week.
Advocates for farmworkers have long pushed to remedy the issue by requiring employers to pay workers overtime after 40 hours a week. Earlier this year, a wage board formed by 2019 fair labor legislation recommended doing just that — though under its proposal, the overtime threshold wouldn’t be fully phased in for another decade. The plan is also pegged to a proposed tax credit for farm owners who pay overtime, which was included in the new state budget. This amounts to millions of taxpayer dollars to offset the cost of paying overtime.
The official summary of the 2019 Farm Laborers Fair Labor Practices Act (FLFLPA) states that the bill “provides for an 8-hour work day for farm laborers,” or 40 hours per week. However, following heated lobbying from the farm industry, no implementing language for 40 hours was included. Instead, the bill provided overtime pay after 60 hours worked, and formed the Wage Board to pursue further expansions.
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