[The Jan. 28] decision by the Farm Laborers Wage Board [to lower the overtime threshold for farm workers to 40-hours per week] demonstrates how completely tone-deaf Albany bureaucrats are to the needs of the state’s agriculture industry. Despite hours of testimony, multiple financial reports, and real-world accounts of the devastating impacts a lower overtime threshold will […]
[The Jan. 28] decision by the Farm Laborers Wage Board [to lower the overtime threshold for farm workers to 40-hours per week] demonstrates how completely tone-deaf Albany bureaucrats are to the needs of the state’s agriculture industry.
Despite hours of testimony, multiple financial reports, and real-world accounts of the devastating impacts a lower overtime threshold will bring, the state Wage Board’s decision has forced the state’s farmers closer to the brink of ruin. Roughly 70 percent of those who participated in public hearings voiced their support for keeping the 60-hour threshold. But, by a vote of 2-to-1, the voices of farmers and farmworkers were irresponsibly ignored.
“Now is not the time to put additional pressure on New York’s farmers.”
Recently, I submitted testimony to the board calling for it to consider the enormous challenges facing New York farmers. Those challenges — an oppressive tax and business climate and an innate competitive disadvantage against other states — have been greatly exacerbated by recent economic conditions as well as COVID-19.
Now is not the time to put additional pressure on New York’s farmers. Supply chain and labor shortages borne from COVID-19 have proven to be highly damaging. Further, the overtime threshold was already recently adjusted down to the current 60-hours per week yielding additional costs. At some point, New York state is going to break the industry altogether, and that is going to spell disaster for the farmers, the consumers, and the businesses reliant on the industry.
[In] lowering the threshold to 40-hours per week, the consequences will be objectively catastrophic. A study from Cornell Agricultural Workforce Development lays out a grim future. It warns of cuts to investments in the state’s agricultural sector, a replacement of laborers through mechanization, and an exodus of workers to other states.
And as I noted in my testimony, similarly, a recent report by Farm Credit East projects changing the overtime threshold to 40-hours per week and pairing that change with an increase in minimum-wage costs, would result in an overwhelming 42 percent spike in labor costs. That is an economic kiss of death.
Throughout our history, farming has always been among New York’s most important and essential industries. [Now], New York’s short-sighted, Democrat-driven Wage Board has committed to regulate a cornerstone industry right out of existence.
William (Will) A. Barclay, Republican, is the New York Assembly minority leader and represents the 120th New York Assembly District, which encompasses most of Oswego County, including the cities of Oswego and Fulton, as well as the town of Lysander in Onondaga County and town of Ellisburg in Jefferson County. This article combines a column Barclay penned before the Jan. 28 Farm Laborers Wage Board decision with a statement he issued after the decision.