NIAGARA (New York) GAZETTE

January 11, 2010

Owners fear impact of worker rights bill

By Mark Scheer

Winter is generally a slow season for area farmers.

This year a group of farm owners in Niagara County are spending some of their offseason downtime lobbying state officials to make sure farmers’ interests are protected as senators consider passage of a bill aimed at providing additional rights to farmworkers.

“It will put small farmers out of business,” said Oscar Vizcarra, owner of Becker Farms in Gasport. “That’s what it will do.”

“It” is the Farmworkers’ Fair Labor Practices Act, a bill that has been kicking around Albany for some time now that is intended to provide overtime pay, disability insurance and other guaranteed benefits t farmworkers who have operated under a unique set of working standards for more than 70 years.

Vizcarra and several other local farm owners are now working with the New York Farm Bureau in a lobbying campaign aimed at convincing state officials that the proposed bill would be bad for their businesses.

“There’s just so much uncertainty in farming from the start,” said Peter Russell, president of Russell Farms in Appleton. “To add this to it would just add another level of uncertainty.

“We’re all for doing what we can to help our employees,” Russell added. “But this law is not going to help farmworkers. I believe it is going to hurt them.”  A version of the bill has already passed in the state Assembly. Senate members are expected to consider an amended version soon.

Tim Bigham, area field advisor for the New York Farm Bureau, described several aspects of the bill as “anti-business,” saying farm owners, especially the smaller ones, simply won’t be able to afford them.

“Some of the items we are not particularly concerned with because a lot of our farmworkers are already able to take advantage of those things, but we are concerned about all the mandatory things that we believe are going to put a lot of farms out of business and, in effect, be putting a lot of farmworkers out of work,” Bigham said. “That doesn’t help the farmworkers.”

Bigham said a main concern is a provision requiring forced payment of overtime rates to workers who are on the job longer than eight hours per day. Bigham argued that farm work should continue to be exempt from such overtime provisions because, by its nature, it is seasonal work, requiring individuals to put in longer hours during warm weather when work can actually be done. Such items, Bigham said, could drive up costs for area farmers, many of whom are struggling financially as it is.

Kevin Bittner, owner of Singer Farms in Appleton, agreed.

“Workers are the biggest expense on the entire farm,” he said. “If we have to up our labor costs on the farm, that’s a big expense. It makes us no longer competitive in a global market.”

Bittner, Bigham and several area farmers met on Friday to discuss the bill with state Sen. Antoine Thompson at his office on Main Street in Niagara Falls. Bigham said farm owners are planning to meet with other senators across the state in the coming weeks in hopes of having their concerns about the bill heard.

Farmworkers’ rights advocates maintain that passage of the bill will raise working standards for New York’s farm employees, a group that has for many years been excluded from some rights and protections afforded to employees in other fields, including guaranteed overtime pay and disability insurance, the right to bargain collectively with other employees and the ability to take at least one day off per week.

Jordan Wells, coordinator for the Rural and Migrant Ministry’s Justice for Farmworkers campaign, maintains passage of the bill would represent a major step forward for farm laborers who are now working under standards put into place 75 years ago. Those antiquated standards, Wells said, deny farmworkers the ability to enjoy benefits afforded workers in other fields across the state, including the ability to collect overtime pay for extra work and to be covered under disability insurance should they be injured or get into an accident off the job.

“What’s good for all other workers in the whole economy is good for farmworkers,” Wells said.

Wells indicated that farmworkers’ rights advocates understand concerns raised by farm owners and have made several concessions aimed at making the bill more palatable to farmers. Wells said the modified version of the bill could come to a vote as early as next week. It ups the amount of hours worked per day to collect overtime to 10 from 8, makes the day-off per week provision optional for the workers themselves and would require only large industrial farms — about 5 percent of the total industry statewide — to give workers collective bargaining rights.

“We feel that there are still advances in this bill,” Wells said.