Submitted Photo State Sen. George Borrello, R-Sunset Bay, speaks out on the state Senate floor earlier this week against a decrease in the hours required for farm workers to receive overtime pay.

State Sen. George Borrello is calling on state Senators to push back on a wage board’s decision to phase in a 40-hour workweek for farm workers.

Borrello’s comments came in support of a non-controversial bill creating a database of New York’s farms and agricultural producers. Borrello fears the database will get a lot smaller in the wake of the Farm Labor Board’s decision to lower the overtime threshold for farms from 60 hours worked in a week to 40 hours a week. The board voted Jan. 29 to lower the farm threshold by four hours every other year, starting with overtime after 56 hours on or after Jan. 1, 2024. Farmworkers would be able to earn overtime after 40 hours in 2032 under the recommendation. The board still needs to make a formal recommendation to Gov. Kathy Hochul’s labor commissioner, who can accept, reject or modify them.

“So unfortunately this database could be really, really small in not a very long period of time,” Borrello said. “So I call on all of my colleagues to push back against this because this is something that is still only a recommendation. A recommendation to the Department of Labor and to our governor. Reject this recommendation because the only person who voted against it was the only person on that three-person wage board who is actually in agriculture. This is clearly rigged and that’s going to be an issue that is going to create a devastating impact on New York agriculture. So, Madame Chairman, I am in favor of this bill, but in the great picture I am very troubled for the future of New York agriculture.”

If the recommendation is approved by the state labor commissioner, New York would join California and Washington state in phasing in an overtime threshold common in other industries. Several other states offer some farm workers overtime, with limitations and exceptions.

Crop farmers who grow vegetables and apples say they would be particularly hard hit when extra seasonal labor is needed. They say higher overtime costs will make them less competitive with farms in other states.

Farm workers in New York didn’t qualify for overtime pay at all until 2020, when the state changed the law to mandate extra pay for workers who exceeded 60 hours a week. The new law also instructed the wage board to consider whether to recommend a lower threshold.

Borrello and Assemblyman Andrew Goodell, R-Jamestown, have been on record since the passage of the Farm Labor Practices Act in 2019. Both were critical that wage boards can only decrease the number of hours before overtime is applied rather than have the option to increase the overtime threshold.

“These three unelected people have determined they’re going to do something that no other state around us has done, and that is to lower the threshold on overtime from 60 hours down to 40 hours,” Borrello said. “Not only is this a problem for farmers, it’s actually a problem for farm workers, the people they are supposedly trying to benefit. But after hours and hours of testimony, we heard from farmers, farm workers, people in agriculture that this would be bad; that the farm workers, the guest workers that come into our state legally from other countries will choose other states other than New York state. And farmers already under a lot of pressure from bad policy in New York state and factors they don’t control, like the price they get for their product, have told us they will get out of the business.”

— The Associated Press contributed to this report.