Fair treatment for farmworkers

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The season of summer abundance is approaching. Bronxites fortunate enough to make use of local farmers’ markets and CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture) will soon enjoy the fertility of the Hudson Valley and the coming months’ truckloads of healthy local produce.

America’s burgeoning food movement has given us much to be thankful for. Countless books and articles have revealed the ills of a food system based on faceless corporate agribusiness. Reform is happening: the lives of some farm animals are better; organic and biodynamic foods are more available; and there is a growing awareness of the harm done by toxic fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and antibiotics. There is growing acceptance of the health, environmental and climate benefits of a shift to plant-based diets, and there is a strong embrace, among those who can afford it, of eating locally, seasonally and ethically.

But there is a worm hidden in this shiny apple — it is the treatment of America’s farm workers, including workers in our own Hudson Valley.

Although New York’s farm workers form the backbone of the state’s multi-billion dollar agricultural industry, they are excluded from basic protections granted to other workers under state and federal law. This deprives more than 80,000 farm workers of the rights that other workers take for granted. 

They are excluded from such basic protections as the right to a day of rest, to overtime pay, and to collective bargaining. Collective bargaining, by the way, is not just about joining a union — it is about being able to just talk about that possibility without fear of retaliation. And because many Hudson Valley farm workers are Latin American migrants here on visas sponsored by their employers, they are reluctant to ask for better treatment. 

Farmworkers Fair Labor Practices Act, Jennifer Scarlott
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