| When last we left the story of the farmworkers rights bill, the bipartisan piece of legislation was being killed by Senator Aubertine's Agriculture Committee after passing easily through the Labor Committee. In his zest to protect upstate farmers, Senator Aubertine argued that it was ok to abuse the human rights of farmworkers in the name of profit margins of mega industrial farms (the only farms that the bill would actually apply to). At that point, the media and advocates pronounced the bill dead.
Or was it?
Check out this interesting tidbit from Politics on the Hudson today:
Just when it looked like a controversial bill that would have given farmworkers added benefits and mandatory rest periods had finally been laid to rest, Sen. Pedro Espada, D-Bronx, has sponsored a piece of legislation that would require workers to have at least one day off per week and receive overtime pay after working 60 hours.
The bill is nearly identical to the Justice for Farmworkers Act, which has been passed by the Assembly each year for the past decade and defeated by the Senate, except for one major difference: some changed language in the bill would allow for it to go straight to the Senate Rules Committee instead of the Agriculture Committee, where it was defeated in April.
Great news! The return of a bill that will protect workers rights of farm hands by guaranteeing such basic human rights as minimum wage and overtime pay. Cheers to all! But don't get too excited too fast. I have a sneaking suspicion that all is not well with the march to justice for farmworkers.
The bill does not allow for farmworkers to collectively bargain as the Justice for Farmworkers Act would have, Espada said, but he said he thinks the farmworkers could win that right through the courts.
Bingo. |
| You know Senator Espada, I'm not a labor lawyer (although that might not be the case after another year of law school). But I do know a little bit about labor law in New York and the United States. You see, the National Labor Relations Act (the Wagner Act) is the source of private sector labor rights in the United States and explicitly exempts agricultural workers from its jurisdiction. That's why all agriculture labor rights emanate from the states. So if you want agriculture workers to have the right to organize and collectively bargain, you have to give them that right .
Now sure, maybe you'd say that the courts could construe this new bill as allowing for organizing rights. And if the New York State Labor Law was silent as to the question of agriculture workers rights to organize and collectively bargain, then that would be a permissible, albeit tenuous, interpretation. Unfortunately, that's not the case. The New York Labor Law explicitly exempts from organizing and collective bargaining:
any individuals employed as farm laborers
That's Article 20 Section 701 3(a) for those at home keeping track and it's specifically the exemption and definitions section of the state Labor Relations Act. It's pretty darned unlikely that the courts will create organizing rights as Espada claims as a result (never say never, they could theoretically rule the whole provision a violation of the state constitution, but don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen).
Maybe I'm missing something here. It's possible that someone misspoke or was misquoted. After all, the above article said that there were only minor changes, while taking away organizing rights is a pretty major change. But on the face of it, it looks like a deal has been cut to get this bill passed by sacrificing the rights of farm workers to organize and collectively bargain along with most other private sector workers. So my question is this; if the farm lobby will fight this bill tooth and nail regardless of whether there are organizing and collective bargaining rights in the bill, and the purpose of this new bill is simply to bypass the Agriculture Committee, then why does the bill strip away the fundamental right to organize and collectively bargain from farm workers? Whose vote is being bought off here?
If you're going to throw workers rights down the drain, let's at least have some transparency so we know who to hold accountable. |
