The onesies make Kyle Dykeman sad.
The writing on the baby clothes says things like “My dad’s a farmer.” “New to the herd.” “Next generation farmer.”
But when Dykeman, 33, looks down at his 10-week-old son, Reese, wearing onesies gifted by friends, he’s just not sure.
“I’ve got a new kid at home that I want to raise the same way I was raised. And I’m sitting here going ‘I’m not going to be able to do that. I just can’t,’” Dykeman said.
For Dykeman, of Dykeman and Sons in the town of Glen, and Montgomery County dairy farmers like him, uncertainty arises from a recent 2-1 decision by the Farm Laborers Wage Board to recommend lowering the current 60-hour overtime threshold for farm workers down to 40 hours over the next decade. The Jan. 28 recommendation still has to be officially adopted by The New York State Department of Labor’s commissioner, who could amend the framework. But if the threshold takes effect the way the recommendation currently stands, farmers will eventually have to pay workers time-and-a-half for every hour worked past a 40-hour week in an industry that regularly demands twice the amount of hours of a typical American workweek. Dairy farmers say those extra wages will cut into what are already razor-thin margins.
On the other side, labor groups are championing the Farm Laborers Wage Board’s decision and the threshold’s gradual rollout as a way to ensure fair pay and equal treatment for farm workers, several of whom lobbied for the change during the Jan. 28 Farm Laborers Wage Board hearing. Labor groups also argue that proposed government subsidies will minimize–if not eliminate–the financial burden farmers would face in having to pay the extra wages as a result of the threshold.
Still, dairy farmers in Montgomery County say the 40-hour overtime threshold could be enough to force them to change their way of life, whether that means moving their farming operations to a state that doesn’t have an overtime threshold, or turning to solar-farm developers as a way to make money off their land.
All of it translates to an unsettled future for dairy farmers in Montgomery County and elsewhere, potentially threatening a critical New York state industry. New York is the fourth-largest producer of dairy in the nation, and it is the state’s biggest economic sector, according to the state’s Department of Agriculture and Markets.
That’s why Dykeman says he feels a twinge of melancholy when he looks down at his new son, who may never know what it’…….
