ALBANY — A state panel that oversees wage issues for farm workers could be just weeks away from deciding the decades-old question of whether these laborers should, for the first time in state history, be entitled to a 40-hour workweek.
It's a decision that many advocates believe is tied in with racial as well as economic equity, and comes in the wake of the New York Department of Agriculture and Markets' recent acknowledgement that farmers of color have “experienced both explicit and implicit forms of discrimination and racism.”
That statement came in a report released by the agency in August that also noted that about 2 percent of New York's 58,000 farm owners or managers are people of color, according to federal data.
The focus of the study was on farm producers, the people who own or manage New York’s 6.9 million acres across 33,000 farms to drive a $5.7 billion industry. The federal agency does not track the demographics of the people who work for those producers, although the report said 20 percent of their hired workers are migrants.
The USDA's survey found that as of 2017 there were 125 Native American producers, 139 Black producers and 606 Latino producers in New York.
It remains unclear how, if at all, the quietly released state report will factor into an upcoming decision on whether farm workers, like employees in other industries, should have a 40-hour workweek. But it is clear that farm industry groups believe it should not be a reason to change longstanding...
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