By Vinnie Rotondaro
Upstate farm workers have been fuming since Brooklyn-based State Sen. Martin Dilan voted “no” on a bill intended to improve their rights and working conditions late last January.
Infuriated by the senator’s decision and concerned that his heavily immigrant constituency in Brooklyn may not know about it, the workers are taking their case directly to borough residents.
“There’s a real frustration for a lot of farm workers upstate that their lives are being impacted by folks down in New York City,” said the Rev. James Witt, the executive director of the Rural and Migrant Ministry, a group dedicated to the bill’s passage. “If farm workers can’t have their voice heard in the city, then they have to bring their voice to it.”
Two Saturday’s ago, a group of about 40 protesters gathered at St. Barbara’s Roman Catholic Church in Bushwick and marched through the neighborhood to Dilan’s office on Knickerbocker Avenue. The group, consisting of students, community organizers, and labor advocates, passed out leaflets and carried banners condemning the senator.
In January, Dilan, who serves New York’s 17th Senatorial District, voted down a measure to pass the Farmworkers Fair Labor Practices Act — which sought to grant farmhands a day of rest, overtime pay, disability insurance and the right to bargain collectively — out of the Labor Committee and onto the Codes Committee, where it would most likely make its way onto the Senate floor for a final vote.
The senator claims the bill was ineffective and wasteful.
“The bill itself effectively does not do what it claims that it will do,” said Graham Parker, a spokesman for the senator, claiming that what was brought to the table was nothing more than an ill-suited copy from other states, like California, that have little in common with New York’s farming practices.
Additionally, he said, “some of the conditions that are being alleged by the farm workers, those are illegal conditions. And as such there should be a thorough legal investigation.”
“It’s apples and oranges,” he said. “One should be taken care of before the other — the legal aspect before the legislative.”
Although the bill passed by 13-3 in the Labor Committee, a series of objections succeeded in getting it rerouted to the Agriculture Committee, where it remains. State Sen. Darrel J. Aubertine, who ran a dairy farm for 35 years before entering public life, heads the Agriculture Committee.
Advocates for farm workers’ rights struggle to understand how Dilan, himself the son of Puerto Rican immigrants, could vote the way he did. Many upstate farm workers come from Latin America. And Dilan, who serves large numbers of newcomers in Bushwick and East Williamsburg, was the lone Democrat and the only Latino on the committee to vote “no”.
“It’s kind of a mystery,” said Martha Shultz, of Justice for Farmworkers. “We’re not sure why he did what he did since a good percentage of his constituency is Latino, and he purports to support the Latino community.
“It makes no sense to us.”
Activists also said that Dilan told them he would vote in favor of the bill, and then flip-flopped. Justice for Farmworkers claims to have a signed letter from Dilan saying he was in favor of the bill’s passage.
The Farmwokers Fair Labor Practices Act has been around for more than 10 years. It has been passed by the State Assembly, but has never been passed by the Senate. Advocates for farm workers hoped that once the Democrats got control of the Senate in January 2008 that it would pass. They helped to reintroduce the bill over the course of 2009, accruing 28 co-sponsors — 25 Democrats and three Republicans, including every Hispanic member of the Senate with the exception of Dilan.
Concessions have been made to the bill in the past. Where the original bill extended collective bargaining to all farm workers in New York State, for example, the amended bill granted the right to the largest 4 percent of farms statewide.
On Monday, the Agriculture Committee held a hearing in which the bill was discussed.
“What we seek now is for the bill to be returned to the committee to which it was properly originally referred to, the Labor Committee,” said Jordan Wells, the coordinator of the Justice for Farmworkers campaign.
Local activists concerned with immigrant rights suspect that Dilan believed his vote would fly under the radar of his immigrant constituency in Brooklyn, who are little concerned with state politics.
“He did this with the understanding that nobody here would even hear about it,” said Monsignor James Kelly, of St. Brigids, a Roman Catholic Church in Bushwick. “They wouldn’t even know who he is.”
The senator said that when the he looked into the nitty gritty of the bill, he found major flaws.
“They talk about the farmers not paying unemployment insurance,” Parker said, “but seasonal workers would not be able to claim unemployment because of the nature of their work.”
Dilan is only straddling the middle ground of a hotly contentious issue, he said.
“That’s why the senator had to come right down the middle on this and weigh the bill on its merits,” he said.
Kelly doesn’t buy it. He and others are working to raise awareness in the community.
“We’re trying to organize the grassroots people here,” he said. “Dilan doesn’t sell out any more than the others, but this time he’s gone over the top.”
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