Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis & Miles, P.C.

The Times Union of Saratoga, New York, published an editorial calling attention to a bill that has stalled in the New York legislature as the state’s Senate fights over which party leads the chamber. The Farmworkers Omnibus Labor Standards Bill seeks to secure some of the most basic labor rights to migrant laborers and other agricultural workers – rights that have protected workers in other industries since the Fair Labor Standards Act established a 40-hour work week and a minimum wage more than 70 years ago.

The proposed labor bill would establish a standard 8-hour work day for agricultural workers. Employers would pay workers overtime for all hours worked in excess of 8 hours. Additionally, workers would be entitled to enjoy one day of rest per week during the harvest season, they would be permitted to form unions, and they would have access to workers’ compensation and unemployment benefits.

Employers would also have to meet basic health standards in the living and working conditions they provide to laborers.

In a perfect world, such laws would be unnecessary because employers could always be counted on to look after their employees and treat them fairly and ethically.

Unfortunately, the health and well-being of workers often comes last, and laborers desperate for work are often easily exploited by their employers. The economic downturn has exacerbated the tendency to exploit, amounting to what activist Kim Bobo calls an “epidemic of wage theft” in America and “a crime wave no one talks about.”

Bobo, who founded the watchdog organization Interfaith Worker Justice, says that “agriculture, poultry processing, janitorial services, restaurant work, garment manufacturing, long term care, home health care and retail are the industries with the most reported cases of wage theft” in the United States.

Still, some New York farmers worry that the bill would hurt farms on many different levels, from raising production costs to losing a competitive edge.

The Times Union, however, says these arguments are merely theoretical  and that other states have successfully implemented similar labor laws.

“New York cannot let such speculative arguments justify underpaying and overworking people and denying them at least a day of rest. We share the view of many advocates that the perceived harms are being greatly overstated, and that the industry and the consumer will absorb the costs as they have in other states such as California,” the Times Union said.

Even the most basic standards, the Times Union points out, “have been under assault for years. The last time the minimum wage was high enough to keep a person who worked 40 hours a week out of poverty was the early 1980s.”

The editorial also noted that earlier in the decade, some lawmakers on Capitol Hill pushed for a 50-hour work week before overtime kicked in.

“It is troubling enough at any time to have lawmakers debate whether only some people should have the same protections from what amounts to exploitation, intentional or not, as others,” the Times Union said.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 18th, 2009 at 8:40 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.