(The Center Square) – A Maine public policy group is speaking out against the governor’s new executive order seeking a minimum wage raise for farm workers.
On Tuesday, Democratic Gov. Janet Mills signed an executive order establishing a formal stakeholder group to develop and implement a minimum wage bill directed at farm workers. The move comes on the heels of the Legislature sustaining the governor’s veto of Legislative Document 398.
The bill would have made agricultural workers, and other agriculture-oriented workers, employees under the state’s wage and hour laws.
The order Mills signed created the Committee to Develop and Implement a Minimum Wage Bill for Agricultural Workers that would design legislation to implement the potential new wage while identifying its impacts on federal and state wage and hour laws.
However, Maine Policy Institute said the state is looking at the wrong aspect of the situation.
“Instead of setting a new minimum wage for farm workers, lawmakers should be finding ways to reduce the burden on agricultural firms so they can share more of their profits with employees,” Jacob Posik, director of legislative affairs for Maine Policy Institute, told The Center Square in an exclusive interview. “State government need not facilitate this with a new minimum wage law for it to occur – it simply needs to take less from these businesses and eliminate regulations that undermine their success.”
Mills said in a release that she “strongly” supports a “state minimum wage for farm workers” and is committed to signing any such bill into law.
“This stakeholder group will allow for a longer and more in-depth analysis of the language of LD398, resolve questions within the agricultural community about what the bill does and does not do and what aspects of farm employment it may change, and help all parties arrive at a shared understanding so that we can move forward with and implement a farm worker minimum wage next year,” Mills said in a statement.
According to a release, Mills vetoed the bill after receiving questions from the agriculture community about the bill’s language.
“Whether for farm workers or other employees, minimum wage laws hurt workers, employers, and consumers alike,” Posik said. “For low-skilled workers, a minimum wage makes it harder to find work, and they often see their hours reduced after these laws are implemented, resulting in a loss of income rather than increased earnings.”
Posik said the “real floor for wages” would always be set at $0 and “no minimum wage law” would change that economic reality.” He said a minimum wage “set to a level” exceeding “the value” of a worker’s labor, they would “effectively be priced out of” the labor market.
Under the order, the committee would be co-chaired by the Department of Agriculture, Conservation, and Forestry commissioners and the Department of Labor. Other members of the committee, according to the release, would be the speaker of the House of Representatives; president of the Senate; representatives from the Maine Farm Bureau, Potato Board, Wild Blueberry Commission, Dairy Industry, and Organic Farm Gardeners Association; the AFL-CIO; Passamaquoddy Wild Blueberry Company; Pine Tree Legal Assistance Farm Worker Unit; a representative of the Maine Center for Economic Policy; a statewide organization supporting farm workers and immigrants in Downeast; and a representative from the statewide land trust.
The committee’s findings are due to the governor by Dec. 1.
