Maine House narrowly votes to apply minimum wage laws to farmworkers
AUGUSTA, Maine — Progressives pushed a bill that would put farmworkers under state minimum laws through the Maine House of Representatives in a narrow Wednesday vote, advancing a labor cause that still faces obstacles.
It would be a major shift for the state’s agriculture industry but risks a showdown between Democratic lawmakers and Gov. Janet Mills. She vetoed a bill last year that would allow farmworkers to collectively bargain. House Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross, D-Portland, proposed a similar bill this year along with the wage and overtime change.
The Democratic-led House voted 73-71 to endorse the measure, which would put farmworkers under Maine’s annually indexed minimum wage of $13.80 per hour. An amendment carved out a portion of the original bill that would allow them to benefit from overtime laws that mandate 1 1/2 time their regular pay for hours worked over the 40-hour workweek.
“These folks gather in the food that we eat,” Rep. Nina Milliken, D-Blue Hill, said at the end of a floor speech that she mostly delivered in Spanish. “They give us life.”
Maine is one of 19 states that does not apply its minimum wage laws to most farmworkers, according to the National Agricultural Law Center. This is in part because they are not classified as employees under state law, remaining subject to the $7.25 federal hourly minimum wage and left out of mandatory overtime laws.
Supporters have framed it as a racial justice issue in an industry reliant on migrants. Both this measure and the collective bargaining one have been hotly contested by farming interests, which argue in part that they are generally paying well above the minimum wage.
The Maine Potato Board estimated that the changes under the earlier bill would cost farms $3.6 million per year, arguing that the bill did not take unique growing seasons into account.
“Let’s just let farmers do what they do, feed us here in the state of Maine and stop fiddling around with these laws,” Rep. Heidi Sampson, R-Alfred, said on the floor.
Mills is going to be instrumental in deciding the fate of both bills. Talbot Ross is back with the collective bargaining bill similar to the one vetoed by the governor last year, although lawmakers are not likely to consider it until 2024.
A similar wage and overtime bill was killed by a legislative committee in 2019, then another one was voted down in the House two years ago. It has gained some momentum despite Mills’ agriculture department suggesting a stakeholder group in April testimony, saying that would be a way to understand “the full economic and labor impacts” of passing such a measure.
Correction: An earlier version of this story contained a dated reference to the bill. This version would not mandate higher overtime pay for farmworkers.