Farmworkers in New York will now have a host of new labor protections enshrined into state law, including the right to organize, after Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed legislation aimed at boosting workers' rights in the agriculture industry.

The legislation gained momentum this year after a state appellate court in Albany decided that farmworkers were legally entitled to collective bargaining rights in New York.

It does more than provide farmworkers the option to organize. It also mandates that they be paid overtime when they work more than 60 hours a week, which wasn't required under the previous law. Those workers will now also be guaranteed one day of rest each week.

The law also will give farmworkers access to workers' compensation, without a payroll threshold, and unemployment benefits. Employers will be precluded from firing or failing to reinstate a farmworker who files a claim for injuries they incurred on the job. None of those protections were previously mandated for farmworkers in New York.

“Their families will have better lives,” Cuomo said. “They will finally, finally have the same protections that other workers have had for 80 years.”

The bill was sponsored by Assemblywoman Catherine Nolan, D-Queens, and state Sen. Jessica Ramos, D-Queens. Ramos, along with a handful of other Senate Democrats, held a series of hearings on the bill earlier this year in different areas of the state.

“Today we are recognizing farm workers as the backbone of New York's multi-billion dollar agricultural industry and acknowledging the dignity in their work,” Ramos said.

Ramos first took office earlier this year, after which she signed on to sponsor the bill in the Senate. But Nolan has carried the bill for several years now. It failed to move in previous years, partly because Republicans who oppose the measure had controlled the State Senate. Democrats now hold a firm majority in the chamber.

“Our Assembly Majority has a proud history of passing workers' rights legislation, a tradition which has continued with the passage of the Farm Laborers Fair Labor Practices Act,” Nolan said. “I am very proud to have carried this legislation for many years, and I am thankful for all the work done by so many in the effort to see this bill be signed into law.”

A coalition of farmers and farming groups have remained opposed to the bill, saying it still contains flaws that will stifle the state's agriculture industry. Those concerns, farmers have said, were not considered by Democrats in the Legislature.

David Fisher, president of the New York Farm Bureau and a dairy farmer from St. Lawrence County, criticized the measure in a statement Wednesday.

“Common ground should have considered what farms can afford and the opportunities our employees will lose as a result of this law,” Fisher said. “In the end, our reasonable requests were cast aside, even though there was support for a moderated bill from legislators on both sides of the aisle.”

The legislation was passed less than a month after the Appellate Division, Third Department wrote in a decision that farm workers cannot be excluded from a decades-old amendment to the state constitution that grants employees certain workers rights, like organizing.

Justice Christine Clark wrote in the appellate court's decision that the definition of who's considered an “employee” for purposes of collective bargaining rights extended to farm workers, in their interpretation of the law.

“When the term 'employees' is given its natural and ordinary meaning, we think it clear that the constitutional right to organize and collectively bargain extends to individuals employed as farm laborers,” Clark wrote.

That lawsuit was brought against the state by a farm worker, who was represented by the New York Civil Liberties Union. The civil rights group celebrated the decision at the time, and hailed the legislation after it was signed by Cuomo Wednesday.

“The signing of this bill sets right 80 years of wrongs done by a racist, Jim Crow-era law that denied farm workers basic rights,” said NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman. “Farmworkers have toiled for too long in dangerous conditions, vulnerable to exploitation.”

The law will take effect at the start of next year, according to the legislation.

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