A Pasture too Far, Forced-Unionism For Family Farms

You know that the union bosses were asking for too much when a New York state Senate Committee voted down their effort to unionize family farm workers.  From the New York State Farm Bureau:

Farmers from across New York applauded the Senate Agriculture Committee’s “No” vote on the Omnibus Farmworker Labor bill that would have cost the state’s struggling family farmers millions of dollars. This bill would have placed family farms squarely in the crosshairs of big money corporate unions seeking to increase their membership by driving agriculture out of the state….New York Farm Bureau was at the forefront of a furious grassroots lobbying effort to defeat the bill and to educate the public, countering defaming rhetoric of the self appointed advocacy groups that included well-funded big labor groups from New York City.

In March, dozens of farmers testified at a Senate Agriculture Committee hearing, urging legislators to defeat the Omnibus Farmworker Labor bill. Following the hearing, farmers hosted a rally on the Capitol steps. The theme of the rally was“Don’t plow us under!”

The Farmworker legislation would have driven up costs and labor regulations to a level that would rank New York second only to California, a state with a much a larger agriculture industry, better growing degree days and significantly larger farms.

New York already is a high cost labor state, recognizing that workers are valuable and critical to the farm’s success. For every $100 in food produced, New York farmers paid $13.82 to farm workers on average – compared to the national average of $8.88.