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Lawmakers Hear Testimony Calling for Overtime, Higher Wages for Farmworkers
Summary
Farmworker advocates, health professionals and legal services attorneys urged the committee to pass legislation to extend minimum wage, overtime pay and paid time off to agricultural workers; farm‑industry groups warned of financial strain and urged alternatives.
BOSTON — Farmworker advocates, legal services attorneys and clinicians pressed the Joint Committee on Revenue to pass the Fairness for Farm Workers Act (filed as S.2011 / S.2012 / H.3107), saying state law continues to exclude agricultural labor from minimum‑wage protections and overtime despite longstanding harms and racialized origins to the exclusions.
Senator Adam Gomez, lead sponsor, told the committee Massachusetts has more than 14,000 farmworkers and that many still earn a state‑law subminimum wage of $8 an hour and lack overtime…
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