N.Y. farmers and workers concerned over potential overtime change

Nov 10, 2021

The Wage Board may determine overtime pay should occur after 40 hours

By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com

Members of New York’s ag sector are concerned about how a potential change to the state’s overtime pay could affect the industry.

Under the Farm Laborers Fair Practices Act, which Governor Cuomo signed into law in 2019, farm employers must pay employees overtime pay of 1.5 times their hourly wage for any work over 60 hours of work or work done on a designated day off.

The law included a provision to create a wage board to discuss industry issues, including lowering the overtime requirement to 40 hours to bring agriculture in line with other sectors.

The wage board is expected to make its decision regarding overtime in ag by the end of the year.

Lowering the overtime threshold by 20 hours per week could have significant effects on the ag sector.

An October 2021 report from Farm Credit East estimates farm labor costs would rise about 17 percent. And when combined with future minimum wage increases, mandatory overtime pay could increase labor costs by about $264 million per year.

“Cutting into the financial viability of a farm may cause some farms to make the unfortunate decision to cease operations and we all know that that could have a ripple effect in the farms’ communities, not just in terms of economics but also environmental,” Joanna Lidback, CFO of Adirondack Farms, told the Press-Republican on Tuesday.

Lidback and other industry reps gathered at Rulfs Orchard in Peru, N.Y. Tuesday morning to voice the need to maintain the 60-hour overtime mark.

Paul Fisher has been coming to the farm from Jamaica for 27 years. His sons, Claude and Damion, work there too.

The family comes to New York to work, and they want to make the most of that time, he said.

“I don’t think anybody should determine when we take a rest day. I think we should take a rest day when we need a rest day. I am from Jamaica. When I got back home, I take a vacation so I don’t need one here. I come here to work. The 60 hours is already taking a toll on us for our family back home, we have to feed our family back home and feed ourselves here and take care of everything,” he told reporters Tuesday morning.

Farms.com has contacted the New York Farm Bureau for comment on the potential overtime threshold reduction.

Video: Western Canadian Agriculture: Hard Times Made the World's Best Farmers

Western Canadian agriculture produced the most advanced farmers in the world not through abundance but through adversity. The crow rate fell. The wheat price went nowhere. The brown envelopes stopped.

When the subsidies disappeared, the bad farmers left and the good ones stayed. And the ones who stayed could not just grow wheat anymore. They started growing lentils and canola and peas and flax and faba beans. They built crop rotation. They got serious about agronomy because there was no government backstop. That process produced the Western Canadian agriculture Dennis Bulani describes in this clip: the most advanced, most educated farming culture in the world.

His contrast with Iowa corn and soybean farmers is sharp. At a DeKalb farmer meeting in Okoboji, Iowa, he asked what crop rotation they ran. Beans on corn stubble, corn on bean stubble. How do you fertilize? The co-op agronomist handles it. Have you considered other crops? No need. We make so much money on corn and soybeans. Western Canadian agriculture was never allowed that comfort. And now those Iowa farmers are watching soybean markets lock up with China and corn prices slide, and they do not have the agronomy knowledge or the research base to pivot. Western Canadian farmers adapted on a dime because they had done it before.

Dennis also makes the case that Western Canadian agriculture keeps adapting in real time. Low commodity prices over the past year have pushed growers to look seriously at precision spot-spray technology. He knows a neighbor who bought a sprayer with the seeing-eye system and sprayed only 80 out of 320 acres. As a chemical retailer Dennis acknowledges that will affect his sales. He supports it anyway, because if it advances Canadian agriculture and makes farmers money, that is a good outcome.

The lesson Dennis draws from the tale of two farms: continuous improvement is the only durable strategy. When canola was $22 a bushel some growers went to Arizona instead of the Crop Production Show. When the price came down those same growers came back to the research and the discipline. Products do not go on Rack Petroleum's shelves unless they pass a replicated trial first. That is what Western Canadian agriculture built through hard times: farmers who do the work whether the times demand it or not.

Dennis Bulani is CEO of Rack Petroleum and Ultimate Yield in Biggar, Saskatchewan. Dan Aberhart hosts GTF Productions, Western Canadian Agriculture's foremost live briefing platform and its foremost AI training platform for ag operators