USA : State robs farmworkers' rights with unionization ban
to overturn the exclusion of farmworkers from crucial state labor laws. The lawsuit charges that the exclusion of farmworkers is a violation of the state’s constitution.
The New York constitution states that all workers have the right to bargain collectively. Yet the state’s Employment Relations Act, which sets the rules for this constitutional right, excludes farmworkers. The Employment Relations Act was originally passed to mimic the exclusionary standards set by federal labor protections in the 1930s.
As Erin Beth Harrist, the lead counsel of the NYCLU’s case has pointed out: “Because of an 80-year-old outdated law, poverty, fatalities and legally-sanctioned discrimination are a way of life for tens of thousands of people working in New York.”
A few states have created their own agricultural labor relations laws which do not discriminate against farmworkers. New York can and should become one of them.
Our organization, the Midstate Council for Occupational Safety and Health, works to advocate for safety and health in all workplaces, but our efforts with farmworkers are hampered by this irrational exclusion. It is much harder and sometimes impossible for us along with the Workers Justice Center of New York and the Workers Center of Central New York (the two organizations suing the state with the NYCLU) to meet with farmworkers and encourage them to meet with each other. They often risk instant retaliation from farm owners, something that would not be legal if they had the statutory right to organize. After constantly seeing that farmworkers lack the protection of the law that most other New York workers have, these advocacy organizations have decided to act.
In the past 3½ years at least six farmworkers died in farm tragedies just in central New York alone: Francisco Ortiz, Nathan Hoover, Daniel Larios Hernandez, Craig Schenk, Marco Antonio Ortiz Perez and Alex Smith. None of these five men and one 14-year-old youth, killed in preventable circumstances, was covered by federal OSHA regulations because of a similar small farm exclusion.
Not only is farming a dangerous, dangerous job, it is challenging in many other ways. Not given to regular eight-hour work shifts because of the demands of the industry, farmworkers often work 12-hour shifts sometimes without a day off. Many are immigrants, living away from their families and isolated by lack of transportation on the farms where they work.
The state’s approximately 60,000 farmworkers are critical to making New York a national leader in farm produce and the fourth largest dairy producer in the country with combined sales of $6.36 billion in 2014. Now is the time to allow farmworkers the right to organize and become a more equitable part of this highly successful industry.
Joyce is the board chair for the Midstate Council for Occupation Safety and Health.