Senator O’Mara and the Senate GOP convention, along with many farm business advocates, stress that the board should take enough time and have the suitable knowledge to evaluate the regulation’s full impression – in addition to the impression of COVID-19 — earlier than recommending adjustments.
Elmira, N.Y., December 28—State Senator Tom O’Mara (R,C,I-Massive Flats) is continuous to voice his sturdy opposition to any transfer by the state’s “Farm Laborers Wage Board” to roll again the present 60-hour-per-week extra time threshold for farm staff.
O’Mara has joined different members of the Senate Republican Convention in a letter this week to the members of the Board urging them to reject any transfer to decrease the present threshold.
The brink was put in place as a part of a complete “Farmworkers Truthful Labor Practices Act” enacted by former Governor Andrew Cuomo and the Legislature in 2019. O’Mara voted towards the act and at the moment singled out the Wage Board provision for explicit opposition. The three-member board was granted the ability to alter the regulation with out the Legislature’s approval.
In a December 27, 2021 letter to the board (see hooked up copy of the letter above), O’Mara and his Republican colleagues wrote, partly, “The lengthy lasting results of the FLFPA should not simply seen and heard by anecdotal tales we hear once we go to farms in our districts, however are supported by a latest state-funded report issued by researchers at Cornell College. The research discovered that if the extra time threshold was lowered to 40 hours, two-thirds of dairy farmers would make important adjustments to their operation, together with leaving the business or investing out of state, and half of fruit and vegetable farmers indicated they’d lower their operations or exit the business.”
O’Mara mentioned, “I used to be against this Act, and particularly the creation of this Wage Board, from the beginning. The truth is, when this laws was being debated I voiced my worry on the ground of the Senate about giving such far-reaching authority to an unelected, unaccountable physique. It’s vital for upstate legislators, for whom the farm economic system is a basis of communities we signify, to maintain shut watch on a Wage Board now holding the way forward for so many farmers and rural economies in its fingers. That is the worst attainable time to danger mandating and regulating extra farms out of enterprise, and that’s precisely what’s at stake right here.”
In January, the New York State Farm Labor Wage Board will revisit the brink set in 2019 and make a dedication on whether or not to decrease the brink to 40 hours. Ninety-six % of farms in New York State, most of that are family-owned, are unable to cowl the prices of paying time and a half; a threshold discount would end in much less hours for workers to work and smaller paychecks. With farms being native financial engines, this Albany mandate would have devastating results on communities throughout New York State.
O’Mara presently co-sponsors laws (S2690) that will prolong the date for the Board to submit its last report back to December 31, 2024. The laws would give the Board extra time to gather and assess knowledge that would supply a extra definitive image of the impression of the 60-hour threshold on the funds and operations of New York farms, in addition to take into account further elements together with the COVID-19 impression on the agricultural business.
O’Mara and the Senate GOP convention, along with many farm business advocates, stress that the board should take enough time and have the suitable knowledge to evaluate the regulation’s full impression – in addition to the impression of COVID-19 — earlier than recommending adjustments.
It has been reported that farm labor prices in New York State elevated 40 % over the previous decade and that the 2019 regulation may end in one other crippling 44-percent improve in wage bills.
Complete farm labor prices are no less than 63 % of internet money farm revenue in New York, in comparison with 36 % nationally.
