Old Labor Laws Run Up Against New Farming Approaches
3rd March 2016
Saco farmer Rick Grant does not want to run afoul of any labor laws. He’s a straight up kind of guy and pays more than minimum wage to his field workers. But as the laws relate to family-owned farms his size – 125 acres under cultivation, so good-sized but far from Big Ag – some aspects of the Fair Labor and Standards Act are confusing. Or worse.
“Some of their rules seem silly, or silly to me,” he said. Like the one that means workers on Grant’s Farm shouldn’t lay hands on peppers grown by his cousin on another farm a few miles away.
All the hunderace of labor unions with none of the benefits. Thank you, Washington D.C.
Complexities in labor laws mean job descriptions that shift at surprising, some would say nonsensical, points, creating bookkeeping headaches and opening the door to potential penalties from the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division. Grant keeps his books and his accountant up to date and wants to avoid a bureaucratic nightmare for doing something as deceptively simple as doing his cousin a favor.
The U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division has increased its efforts to enforce fair labor laws nationwide. “Vigorously” is the department’s term for it. They’ve added investigators and focused on traditionally low wage industries, like farm work, launching 1,400 investigations in agriculture in 2015. The department found that 80 percent of its investigations in the areas of migrant, seasonal and guest workers uncovered violations worth a total of $4.3 million in back wages to more than 10,000 workers.
Of course. Bureaucrats have to be able to demonstrate that they are doing their jobs, even if those jobs are terminally stupid.
But recently the Department of Labor also imposed penalties on Vermont farms and a vineyard in New Hampshire for violations of fair labor laws. Grant, like many in Maine’s agricultural community, has his ear to the ground and a lot of questions. Have inspectors been by? Has anyone been penalized? Does anyone really understand this stuff, besides lawyers and bureaucrats?
Nowadays, getting a visit from government employees is like being raided by the KGB. And God help you if your papers aren’t in order.
“I think the best thing to do is stay small and not hire anybody,” Lazor said. “That’s easier said than done though.”
But the only way to be safe.