ASSOCIATED PRESS

February 4, 2007

Farm workers see hope in federal wage increase

By JOHN SEEWER
Associated Press Writer

TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) — Workers who pick vegetables on Ohio farms hope their concerns about being excluded from the state’s increased minimum wage will be resolved by a federal boost in pay.

Ohio lawmakers voted to exclude some farm workers from the new minimum wage that Ohio voters approved in November, raising it from $5.15 to $6.85.

But now Congress is negotiating a wage hike that could eclipse Ohio’s minimum wage and include farm workers.

“It might make the issue moot in Ohio,” said Baldemar Velasquez, president of the of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee.

The farm workers union has threatened to challenge in court the decision to leave out their members from the minimum wage increase.

As many as 5,000 mostly Hispanic workers who spend weeks during harvest picking tomatoes and cucumbers will be excluded, Velasquez said. An estimated half of the workers are illegal.

“To deny some of Ohio’s hardest working people this minimum-wage increase is mean-spirited and contributes to an underclass in our state,” Velasquez said.

John Wargowsky, the Ohio Farm Bureau’s director of labor and services policy, disputed those claims, saying the majority of Ohio’s migrant workers will be paid the new wage, and that only small farm operations will be exempt.

Whether the union files a lawsuit may depend on what happens in Washington.

Velasquez said he wants to make sure lawmakers in Congress don’t try what happened in Ohio.

“This is one of those issues to go to the mat for,” he said. “Farm workers have been excluded for too long.”

The Republican-controlled state legislature voted in December to amend the minimum wage increase, excluding amusement parks, the fishing industry and some agricultural workers.

The amendment exempts businesses doing less than $250,000 in business annually from paying farm workers the minimum wage.

Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, a Democrat, opposed the move and wants to review it.

Supporters of the amendment said they were trying to stay consistent with the Federal Labor Standards Act, which exempts short-term and piece-rate farm workers.

Migrant farm workers are covered under minimum wage laws in states including Michigan and California. Some other states, though, don’t include those workers.

“It is not uncommon for farm workers to be excluded from coverage or to get less than other people,” said Marc Grossman, a spokesman for the United Farm Workers, a California-based union.

“It is really a tragedy because there’s not a class of workers that benefits more from minimum wage,” he said.