August 5, 2024
The minimum wage for most agricultural workers in Mass. is $8 an hour. Will that change?
BY MassLive
SPRINGFIELD — Patricia Lopez, an immigrant from El Salvador who lives in Springfield, used to work on Massachusetts farms. This season, she took a job at a tobacco field in Connecticut, in part because it paid better.
Lopez makes $16 per hour, while last year in Massachusetts, she made about $13 per hour — below the state minimum wage of $15 per hour.
Like some other states, Massachusetts has an exception for most agricultural workers that sets their minimum wage at $8 per hour.
Western Massachusetts legislators want to change that. Pending House and Senate bills would require that agricultural workers make the regular state minimum wage, accrue paid time off, earn overtime for working more than 55 hours each week and get two 15-minute, paid breaks during the work day. It includes a tax credit for some of the overtime costs for farms.
The legislation sits in the Joint Committee on Revenue with just days until the formal session comes to a close Wednesday. Advocates don’t expect it to pass this session. The coalition pushing for it plans to continue again next legislative session, said Claudia Quintero, a staff attorney at the Central West Justice Center who works on the organization’s Migrant and Seasonal Farmworkers’ Project.
Attorney Claudia Quintero advocates for the rights of farmworkers, and represents farmworkers across the state. (Kamila O’Neill photo)
The coalition of organizations advocating for the change include the ACLU of Massachusetts, the Pioneer Valley Workers Center and the Central West Justice Center.
A higher wage and better working conditions would allow Lopez and her 7-year-old son to have a better life, she said, speaking in Spanish with a translator from the Pioneer Valley Workers Center, where Lopez is a board member.
“It’s a great piece of legislation to me,” Lopez said. “I’m a single mom … having the minimum wage and paid rests would mean a lot to me and help me a lot.”
Other states
Some nearby states have higher wages for farm workers. The minimum in New York state is $15 per hour — and $16 in New York City, Long Island and Westchester County. In Connecticut, the rate is the same as the state’s regular minimum wage, $15.69 per hour. A bill in Maine to raise the minimum wage for farmworkers to the state’s minimum, $14.15, failed in April.
The low wages make it hard for farmworkers to make ends meet in Massachusetts. “We shouldn’t have workers suffering in the way they do because of their wages,” said Quintero, who says she sees many face housing and food insecurity.
A Springfield health clinic that treats farmworkers noticed that financial stress.
The Baystate Brightwood Health Center in Springfield provides care for thousands of farmworkers as part of the Connecticut River Valley Farmworker Heath Program.
Ryann McChesney, a family nurse practitioner at the clinic, and Dr. Audrey Guhn, the clinic’s medical director, say farm workers go hungry. Typically they see farm laborers struggle with food insecurity in November into the winter, but with severe flooding last summer on farms cutting their hours, McChesney and Guhn saw people struggle earlier than usual. So, they opened a food pantry at the clinic.
“We had to do something. It was a recurrent tale of not enough food for our families,” Guhn said.
Lellys Nazario, a community health worker at the Brightwood Community Health Center in Springfield, organizes the shelves inside the farm worker food pantry located in the center on Plainfield Street. (Don Treeger / The Republican) 7/24/2024The Republican
At a recent Tuesday distribution, all the food was given out, Guhn said. “I think that’s going to just continue to grow.”
Lopez agreed hunger is a big problem for farmworkers, especially with inflation. “Now that prices for everything have risen,” she said, “our wages don’t cover the ability for us to afford that. Our wages haven’t been raised and they haven’t been raised to the amount we deserve.”
She tries to save as much as she can during the farming season to keep her afloat in the winter, when farm work dries up and she does snow removal.
Heat stress
Advocates are also pushing for paid breaks to protect workers from heat stress. Those who work more than 6 hours are required to have a lunch break, but it does not have to be paid. Amid intense heat, some farms shift their hours and make efforts to bring workers indoors.
“What we’re hearing is it doesn’t feel like enough,” said Maya McCann, a fellow at the Central West Justice Center, who is running a farmworker medical-legal partnership with Brightwood Community Health Center.
McChesney and Guhn say they hear of chronic health issues, like dizziness and headaches, that can stem from heat exposure and dehydration by farmworkers. “I definitely talk to patients a lot about the extreme heat and temperatures and how often they are getting breaks and when,” McChesney said. Guhn followed up with someone after an emergency room visit who said she got two 10-minute breaks in a 12-hour day.
The program visits sites that employ people on H-2A visas for temporary agricultural work, which McChesney said is not the majority of farmworkers in the Pioneer Valley area. Workers employed through the visa program have a different minimum wage set by the federal government, and in Massachusetts make at least $17.80 per hour.
McChesney said access to a bathroom is another issue that comes up on her visits to farms. McChesney and Guhn also see people restrict their water intake because they lack bathroom access on farms. The clinic has seen people come in with poison ivy in the genital areas from squatting in the field to go to the bathroom, Guhn said.
Workers at the Brightwood Community Health Center in Springfield unload and hand out boxes of food at the farmworker food pantry on Plainfield Street. (Don Treeger / The Republican) 7/24/2024The Republican
Leninn Torres, a community leader at the Pioneer Valley Workers Center who has performed farm work, said heat-fatigued workers continue on the job because they can’t afford to stop working.
While working on farms during the pandemic, he saw a Guatemalan immigrant suffer a heat stroke, he testified in late May, in support of the legislation at a hearing on Poverty in the Commonwealth held at American International College in Springfield.
“She had to continue working the following day due to the economic need that each worker faced through this pandemic,” Torres said, speaking in Spanish with a translator.
Several weeks ago, when New England was suffering from a brutal heat wave, one of Lopez’s coworkers started to feel dizzy, she said. “His body could not take it anymore,” she said. They took him to the shade and gave him Gatorade, and workers were sent home early.