ALBANY — New York’s agriculture community is advocating for amendments and improvements to the Farm Laborers Fair Labor Practices Act (FLFLPA) to ensure farmworkers’ rights are protected. On Wednesday, February 21, progress was made toward protecting the rights of farmworkers during a Preliminary Injunction Hearing that took place in Buffalo, NY. The hearing was scheduled to address the concerns of farmworkers and farmers.
“While progress was made, our efforts to protect farmworkers’ rights have been delayed. We will continue to advocate for fairness for farmworkers in New York State,” said Brian Reeves, president of the New York State Vegetable Growers Association. “Farmworkers deserve the same rights as everyone else. By making the amendments and improvements to the FLFLPA that New York’s agriculture community is seeking, farmworkers will finally have the same collective bargaining right as all other private sector workers.”
Under New York’s current farm labor collective bargaining law, farmworkers do not have the same rights as all other private sector workers in NYS:
- Farmworkers are not given the right to a secret ballot election, which is the right of all other workers.
- Farmworkers do not have the right to choose to no longer be represented or to decertify, which violates their constitutional right of freedom of association.
–Grow NY Farms
