Farmworkers Deserve Equal Rights New York's denial of basic labor protections to farmworkers is a moral failing that we have the power to correct. Each year, New York supports the $5 billion agricultural industry through a variety of generous subsidies and tax breaks—yet no appreciation or respect is given to the people who perform this difficult and dangerous work. It is time once and for all to show some respect for the people who serve as the backbone of New York's largest industry, and who in doing so, provide us with our daily nourishment. Disability Insurance New York is unique in its exclusion of farmworkers from temporary disability insurance coverage. Not all states provide disability insurance, but those that do—California, NJ, Hawaii, Puerto Rico—cover farmworkers...except New York. New York covers virtually all workers with disability insurance. In fact, Section 201 of Article 9 of the Workers Comp Law extends disability insurance coverage to fashion models. However, the very same section explicitly excludes farmworkers from coverage. This is not a pretty picture. Disability insurance will cost agricultural employers nothing or next to nothing. The premiums are extremely inexpensive, and can be covered by a payroll deduction. The maximum annual premium (which assumes the employee hits the annual income cap of $17,680—most farmworkers don't) is $28.29 for a male employee or $56.58 for a female employee. Weekly 60¢ payroll deductions would fully cover the premium for male employees and would reduce the premium for female employees to $25. Day of Rest "Six days you may labor and do all your work; but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord, your God. No work may be done then." - Deuteronomy 5 When farmworkers are compelled to work for days on end, family and social life, nutrition, hygiene, and physical well being can suffer tremendously. In its policy handbook, the New York Farm Bureau acknowledges that farmworkers should have the option to take a day of rest each week. Overtime Pay During the 1930s, farmworkers were excluded from the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) to accommodate the explicitly racist concerns of southern Dixiecrats: "There is another matter of great importance in the South, and that is the problem of our Negro labor. There has always been a difference in the wage scale of white and colored labor. So long as Florida people are permitted to handle the matter, the delicate and perplexing problem can be adjusted; but the Federal Government knows no color line and of necessity it cannot make any distinction between the races? Now, such a plan might work in some sections of the United States but those of us who know the true situation know that it just will not work in the South. You cannot put the Negro and the white man on the same basis and get away with it." - Representative James Mark Wilcox, (D- Florida) "[Under the FLSA] what is prescribed for one race must be prescribed for the others, and you cannot prescribe the same wages for the black man as for the white man." - Representative Martin Dies, (D- Texas) "Organized Negro groups of the country are supporting [the FLSA] because it will?render easier the elimination and disappearance of racial and social distinctions, and?throw into the political field the determination of the standards and the customs which shall determine the relationship of our various groups of people in the South." - Representative Edward Cox (D- Georgia) "Any man on this floor who has sense enough to read the English language knows that the main object of this bill is, by human legislation, to overcome the great gift of God to the South." - Senator "Cotton Ed" Smith (D- South Carolina) We do not live in the Deep South and this is not 1938. We live in New York State in 2009—home to FDR, Frances Perkins, and Robert Wagner. The farm labor force, which continues to be primarily made up of people of color, is still denied this basic protection. New York must extinguish this shameful Jim Crow legacy by extending to farmworkers the same right to overtime pay enjoyed by their counterparts in other industries. Youth "Sub-Minimum" Wage Agricultural employers can legally pay teenage farmworkers as little as $3.20 per hour. That amounts to less than half of the New York State and federal minimum wage, and creates a perverse incentive to hire minors rather than adults. According to the Department of Labor, only a handful of employers exploit this loophole—but it is one that must be closed. Anyone who has performed the intense physical labor required by agriculture understands that it is much more valuable than $3.20 per hour. |
