Local farmworkers are expressing fear that a change is overtime by the farmworkers’ wage board will reduce or eliminate their hours.
Cuomo had signed a bill in 2019 that required farmworkers to be paid overtime if they worked over 60 hours or on a day of rest.
The bill went into effect in 2020 but so did the creation of the farmworkers’ wage board that would look into overtime pay and possibly make changes.
The board is set to meet in November to discuss possibly reducing the 60 hour threshold to 40, but the Grow NY Farms Coalition has stated that a change like that would have a severely negative impact on the agriculture business for the entire state.
Consequences of the threshold change could result in farmworkers needing a second job to make up for the difference is lost wages, or farms losing workers altogether who go to a different state with less restrictions.
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