Speaker Talbot Ross, Sen. Hickman introduce bills to protect rights of farm workers

AUGUSTA – On Tuesday, Speaker of the House Rachel Talbot Ross, D-Portland, and Sen. Craig Hickman, D-Winthrop, introduced a series of bills before the Legislature’s Labor and Housing Committee to protect the rights of agricultural workers in Maine.

“Farmers and farmworkers are all hardworking people. However, there are serious and deeply entrenched structural and systemic problems in our agricultural sector and we must change that,” said Speaker Talbot Ross. “This package of legislation will allow Maine to take a significant step in righting historical wrongs and finally working towards equitable conditions. Farmworkers, who travel thousands of miles from their homes to feed us, deserve nothing less than the legal protections afforded to all other working people. Current law perpetuates and abets an institutional and systemic legal system that fails to provide farmworkers with equal protection under the law. Maine can — and must — do better.”

“This is a straightforward bill that defines agricultural workers as employees. This bill works in concert with Speaker Talbot Ross’s bills to ensure the basic rights of agricultural workers, who help form the backbone of our economy,” said Sen. Hickman, who runs an organic farm. “Farming is back-breaking, sometimes dangerous work. It’s true that farm employers who act unscrupulously, and take advantage of their employees, are rare birds in Maine. But workers who find themselves employed under these bad-faith actors deserve legal protections.”

Speaker Talbot sponsored LD 398, “An Act to Make Agricultural Workers and Other Related Workers Employees Under the Wage and Hour Laws” and LD 525, “An Act to Protect Farm Workers by Allowing Them to Organize for the Purposes of Collective Bargaining.” LD 398 would ensure that agricultural employees and seasonal farm employees are subject to the laws that place limits on mandatory overtime. It also provides that agricultural employees fall under the laws that set a minimum wage and overtime rate. It provides that the laws that set an overtime rate apply to certain activities related to agricultural produce, meat and fish products and perishable foods. The bill phases in overtime pay for individuals employed in agriculture and certain activities related to agriculture. LD 525 would give agricultural workers the right to collective bargaining.

“I started working on farms because I wanted a career in food production but I didn’t want to be a business owner. However, the poor compensation, and unsafe and undignified working conditions I experienced directly, and observed on other farms, led me to conclude that working for myself was the  only way to make a dignified living through farming,” said Kelsey Herrington, co-owner of Two Farmers Farm in Scarborough, in testimony supporting both bills. “I share my experience not to advocate for small business ownership as a solution to labor exploitation, because it is not, but to demonstrate how commonplace the dehumanizing conditions of farm work are — they impact all types of workers on all types of farms.”

Bo Dennis of Dandy Ram Farm of Monroe also submitted testimony in favor of those two bills: “I now have a diversified flower, herb, and seed farm with 4 workers. We have integrated a wage of $17-20/ an hour for our employees into our operating budget as a business. We believe with business planning assistance this is possible across farms in the state. Farms should be held to the same standards as other businesses and workers deserve rights codified into law.”

LD 1483, “An Act to Protect the Rights of Agricultural Workers,” sponsored by Sen. Hickman, would protect agricultural workers’ right to access to health care, education, legal services and other key services. This bill would codify the ruling of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court Case State v. Decoster.

During his testimony, Sen. Hickman quoted former President Abraham Lincoln, who said, “Now, there is no such relation between capital and labor as assumed, nor is there any such thing as a free man being fixed for life in condition of a hired laborer… Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much higher consideration.”

“Many farmworkers toil for wages that have not kept up with inflation. For too many of them, those wages were not that high to begin with. Compounding their often low pay are issues such as inadequate housing, wage theft, difficult if not unsafe working conditions, intimidation and harassment from employers, separation from friends and family, and other challenges,” said Tobin Williamson, Advocacy Manager with the Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition, in testimony supporting all three bills. “We are grateful that many Maine State Legislators have noticed the hard work done by Maine’s agricultural workers and have proposed ways to improve their working conditions.”

The bills face further action in committee.