ALBANY, New York (WWNY) – The New York Farm Laborer Wage Board voted Friday to recommend that Labor Commissioner Roberta Reardon decrease the state’s farm worker overtime threshold to 40 hours over the course of 10 years, beginning January 1, 2024.
The current threshold is 60 hours – something many local farmers and workers have said they want to keep. Farmers worry some of them will go out of business if the OT is changed.
The phase-in schedule would begin on January 1, 2024 with the threshold set at 56 hours; on January 1, 2026, with the threshold set at 52 hours; on January 1, 2028, with the threshold set at 48 hours; on January 1, 2030, with the threshold set at 44 hours; on January 1, 2032, with the threshold set at 40 hours.
The wage board was originally scheduled to make a decision about the overtime rule in mid-December, but postponed it and took more testimony before Friday’s vote.
The New York Civil Liberties Union issued the following statement:
“The workers on whom we depend for the food on our tables have waited over 80 years for dignity and to be afforded the same basic workplace protections as all other New Yorkers. We urge Commissioner Reardon and Governor Hochul to accept the Wage Board’s recommendations and bring an end to the Jim Crow-era injustice and discrimination against farmworkers that the Farm Laborers Fair Labor Practices Act was intended to reverse. New York’s agriculture industry must no longer depend on the continued exploitation of farmworkers.”
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