Committee Hears Bill to Raise Wages & Strengthen Farmworker Rights

The Maine Legislature’s Labor Committee held a public hearing Wednesday on three bills that would raise wages and expand rights for agricultural workers in Maine.

LD 589, Act to Make Agricultural Workers and Other Related Workers Employees Under the Wage and Hour Laws, sponsored by Sen. Rachel Talbot Ross (D-Cumberland, Dist. 28), would ensure that farmworkers in Maine would be eligible for the state minimum wage and overtime. It would also place limits on the amount of mandatory overtime farmworkers can be required to work.

"Agricultural workers perform grueling, dangerous work for long hours without most of the rights or benefits that other workers enjoy. As nurses and health care professionals, we hold that it isunacceptable to grant a worker fewer legal rights for doing a job that is essential to society," wrote Maine State Nurses Association President Cokie Giles in testimony supporting LD 589. "The shameful decades of excluding agricultural workers from employment rights should end now."

On the same day, the Labor Committee held a public hearing for Talbot Ross’ bill LD 588, An Act to Enact the Agricultural Employees Concerted Activity Protection Act, which gives agricultural workers the right to engage in certain concerted activity. Although it would not give these workers the right to unionize, it would allow them to discuss wages, working conditions and terms of employment amongst themselves as well publicize complaints about wages and workplace issues without fear of retaliation from their employer. In addition, it would permit farmworkers to take legal action and participate in investigations of workplace complaints without fear of intimidation or retaliation.

The Committee also took up LD 357, sponsored by Sen. Rick Bennett (R - Oxford). Bennett's bill would apply the minimum wage to farmworkers and ensure they have access to a private right of action.  

Nearly 90 years ago, workers in agriculture were intentionally excluded from benefits and protections in the National Labor Relations Act, which protects the rights of workers to unionize and collectively bargain. Farmworkers were also exempted from wage and overtime protections in the federal Fair Labor Standards Act. They are still not eligible to be paid overtime when working over 40 hours a week and are not considered employees under Maine law, so they are not eligible for the state minimum wage and are not entitled to overtime when working over 40 hours a week.
 

A disproportionately large share of Black, Latino, and Indigenous Mainers work in farming. About one-quarter of Maine farmhands live in poverty, earning roughly 4.5 times as likely to live below the poverty line as other Maine workers. The Legislature has passed similar bills in past years, but Governor Janet Mills vetoed them, arguing that they would harm profits for farm owners.
 

The Somali Bantu Community Association (SBCA) testified in support of LD 588 and argued that farm workers "deserve the same rights as all other employees." The SBCA runs Liberation Farms, a community farming program that provides support for over 200 refugee farmers to grow food in Maine.

"The exclusion of farmworkers from basic rights such as minimum wage and fair overtime pay stems from policies meant to exclude certain workers, typically people of color and immigrants," the SBCA wrote. "The Somali Bantu community understands the racism ingrained in agricultural labor. Bantus endured centuries of oppression in Somalia as agricultural laborers, as recent as the mid-1900s. Policies that do not afford farmworkers equal pay rights continue the historic oppression within the farming sector in the United States and across the world."