Maine AFL-CIO & APRI Maine Support Farmworker Rights

Legislators and labor advocates spoke on Tuesday in support of two measures that would expand labor protections for farmworkers in Maine. L.D. 525, sponsored by House Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross, would give farmworkers the right to form union. The Speaker is also sponsoring L.D. 398, which would provide overtime and wage protections for farmworkers, phased in gradually over the next few years to give agricultural businesses time to adjust.

In a guest column in the Portland Press Herald this week, Maine AFL-CIO President Cynthia Phinney and Garrett Stewart, President of the A. Philip Randolph Institute Maine Chapter, expressed support for the two bills, arguing that it is past time that farmworkers be granted the right to unionize  and made eligible for overtime.

"Farmworkers perform one of the most essential functions in our society," they wrote. "While their back-breaking labor puts food on our tables, still they are treated like second-class citizens. In addition to struggling with some of the lowest wages in the country, they are often brutally exploited."

A 2020 report that found farm employers stole $76 million in wages from 154,000 workers over 20 years. Agriculture also ranks among the most dangerous sectors with one of the highest fatal injury rates. Workers are vulnerable to sexual abuse, extreme heat waves, toxic pesticides and accidents with heavy machinery.

"Whether it’s raking blueberries or working in the seafood, poultry, dairy or egg industries, power imbalances related to immigration status and language barriers are a regular part of the lives of agricultural workers in Maine," wrote Phinney and Stewart. "Migrant workers in Maine have complained of substandard worker housing. In one case, wreath makers in Washington County reported that they were fired after raising concerns about a labor contractor who sexually harassed them."

According to the Maine Bureau of Labor Standards, the legislation would apply to nearly 35,000 migrant workers, many of whom come to Maine on guest-worker visas. Phinney and Stewart noted that Governor Janet Mills last year vetoed a bill that would have allowed farmworkers to have collective bargaining rights and urged her to reconsider her position

Speaking in favor of her bills Talbot Ross said it was time to correct a past injustice as farmworkers and domestic workers were excluded from collective bargaining rights and wage and overtime protections in New Deal legislation in the National Labor Relations Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act in the 1930s.

“Generation after generation have been trapped in poverty working under a wage scale that for more than four decades paid them a lower minimum wage and continues almost a century later,” she said. “While we are not responsible for writing that history, we are responsible for the history we make. We are responsible for what we do to change it.'