ALBANY – Local farming advocates are voicing concerns over a new state law that gives farm workers a right to unionize, collect overtime pay, and take a day off every week.

The Farm Labor Bill signed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Wednesday ensures farmhands get many of the same benefits seen in other areas of the workforce, including disability and paid family leave coverage, unemployment benefits, and one and one-half times normal rate for more than 60 hours per week. It also requires that workers get 24 consecutive hours of rest each week.

The bill takes effect Jan. 1, thereby revoking an 80-year provision that's kept such benefits out of reach for farm workers.

The governor said Wednesday that the new law is “not just a great achievement in terms of the effect on the human condition; it's also a milestone in the crusade for social justice.”

But naysayers argue the legislation comes at a hefty price, including the possible altogether loss of work for the employees it's supposed to help.

Dr. Steven Dygert, owner of Fantasy Fruit Farm in Afton, says the bill puts his business in a bind, not just to pay workers, but to even keep workers. Dygert runs his operation with nine migrant workers under provisions of H-2A, a federal program that brings foreign nationals to the U.S. to fill temporary agricultural jobs.

“The legislature managed to make a law that hurts the farmer, hurts the worker, and helps nobody,” said Dygert, citing a financial impact on his farm that's too difficult to sustain. Under the new law, he said workers getting $13.25 per hour will require nearly $20 per hour after more than 60 hours are logged – and that kind of pay just isn't in the coffers.

Worse yet, he expects the 60-hour work week will be whittled to a 40-hour week in the future, meaning a potentially bigger loss of pay for hourly employees.

“They come and want to work 60 hours a week and make a lot of money. So if they work 40 hours a week, they make $500 a week; if they work 60 hours a week, it's about $800 a week,” he explained. “They're at a disadvantage because they won't make $300 a week that they could be making. Then what will happen eventually – and probably soon – when they find out they can work only 40 hours, they won't come.”

Dygert is joined in opposition by several Republican state officials and the New York State Farm Bureau, which says the Farm Workers Bill fails to meet the real challenges of farmers and farmworkers, and it puts family farms especially at risk.

Said NYFB President David Fisher, “New York's farmers have been at the table from the beginning asking for a workable solution, a bill that would provide the balance agriculture would need to sustain itself as an important job creator and food provider in this state … 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.”

Fisher added that while the finalized bill is more workable than the original, it still leads farmers down a difficult financial path.

State Senator Fred Akshar (R-52nd District) says the bill may be detrimental to NY agricultural.

“The bill claims to help farm workers, but heaps $300 million in operating costs onto the backs of New York's farmers and limits their flexibility to employ seasonal workers,” he said. “This, in turn, will simply drive our farm workers out of New York to neighboring states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan in order to maximize their limited seasonal hours.”