Senator O’Mara and the Senate GOP conference, together with many farm industry advocates, stress that the board must take adequate time and have the appropriate data to assess the law’s full impact – as well as the impact of COVID-19 -- before recommending changes.
Elmira, N.Y., December 28—State Senator Tom O’Mara (R,C,I-Big Flats) is continuing to voice his strong opposition to any move by the state’s “Farm Laborers Wage Board” to roll back the current 60-hour-per-week overtime threshold for farm workers.
O’Mara has joined other members of the Senate Republican Conference in a letter this week to the members of the Board urging them to reject any move to lower the current threshold.
The threshold was put in place as part of a comprehensive “Farmworkers Fair Labor Practices Act” enacted by former Governor Andrew Cuomo and the Legislature in 2019. O’Mara voted against the act and at that time singled out the Wage Board provision for particular opposition. The three-member board was granted the power to change the law without the Legislature’s approval.
In a December 27, 2021 letter to the board (see attached copy of the letter above), O’Mara and his Republican colleagues wrote, in part, “The long lasting effects of the FLFPA are not just seen and heard through anecdotal stories we hear when we visit farms in our districts, but are supported by a recent state-funded report issued by researchers at Cornell University. The study found that if the overtime threshold was...
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