New York state farmworkers could see a 40-hour work week in the next decade

New York state’s Farm Laborer Wage Board voted on Friday to lower farm workers’ overtime threshold, the Albany Times Union reports. The wage board recommended in a 2 to 1 decision that the state’s labor commissioner decrease farm workers’ current 60-hour work week to 40 over the next decade, starting in 2024. Friday’s vote came more than 80 years after the passage of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938, which established a minimum wage and the right to overtime after working more than 40 hours per week, but excluded farm and domestic workers to ensure the passage of New Deal legislation. —Matthew Sedacca