Media Contact

Arianna Fishman, afishman@nyclu.org, 212-607-3372

September 30, 2022

NEW YORK – Today, state Labor Commissioner Roberta Reardon announced that the state’s farmworker overtime threshold will reduce to 40 hours over the course of the next ten years, beginning January 1, 2024. Farmworkers are one of the only hourly workers in New York state that are denied overtime at 40 hours.

In response, the New York Civil Liberties Union issued the following statement from executive director Donna Lieberman:

“Farmworkers have waited over 80 years for an end to the racist exclusion that has stolen countless hours of overtime pay. Today, the Department of Labor took a historic step to bring that wait to an end.

“New York will prevent future generations of workers from suffering by bringing overdue wage fairness to farmworkers, eradicating this racist Jim Crow policy once and for all. Now, New York’s agriculture industry will no longer be able to use an overtime loophole to build their business plans on the backs of Black and Brown workers.”