Labor advocates call Gov. Mills’ veto of her own farmworker wage bill ‘an embarrassment’

Another attempt to give farmworkers in Maine the right to minimum wage has failed, but this time Gov. Janet Mills vetoed her own bill. 

In a veto message Tuesday, Mills said “the Legislature’s changes to the bill leave me no choice,” citing changes made during the committee process.

The bill as originally drafted would have guaranteed that agricultural workers would be paid at least $14.15 an hour and have the same annual cost-of-living increases provided to other hourly workers. The bill also included expanded recordkeeping requirements for employers.

LD 2273 was born out of recommendations from the Agricultural Worker Minimum Wage Committee, which Mills formed last July vetoing a similar bill last legislative session. A group of lawmakers, labor advocates and agriculture industry representatives spent months workshopping a new bill. The committee co-chairs did not agree on overtime or voluntary, unpaid rest breaks, so those protections were not included in the new proposal. 

“Vetoing her own administration’s proposal is absolutely ridiculous,” said Sen. Mike Tipping (D-Penobscot), who co-chairs the Labor and Housing Committee, which workshopped the legislation. 

Thom Harnett, a former state representative and legal advocate for farmworkers, called the governor’s veto a “slap in the face to the members she appointed to the Agricultural Worker Minimum Wage Committee.”

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“This marks the fourth time in a span of 27 months that Maine’s governor has vetoed bills that would have improved the lives of the people who put food on our tables,” Harnett said in a written statement. “The fourth time that she has said with her actions, ‘I don’t see you and I don’t care about you.’”

Lawmakers, including House Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross (D-Portland), who sponsored the bill, expressed concerns that the original proposal excluded the private right to action. Under the governor’s draft, the bill required agricultural workers to go through the Department of Labor to bring action against wage violations and would not allow them to bring their own private lawsuit against their employer. 

A majority of the Labor and Housing Committee opted to strike that provision and instead allow for workers to bring private action. And while there was some opposition to the bill expressed during floor debates in the Maine Senate and House of Representatives, it centered on the wage for piece-rate work — not the right to private action. 

However, in her veto message, Mills wrote that she doesn’t believes “it is appropriate to authorize a private right of action carte blanche, particularly in the case of farms, because I am deeply concerned that doing so would result in litigation that would simply sap farmers of financial resources and cause them to fail.”

In addition to the minimum wage bill, Mills vetoed another bill that would have given farmworkers the right to discuss wages and engage in other concerted activity. 

LD 525 was carried over from last legislative session and originally proposed granting agricultural workers the right to unionize. In 2022, Mills also vetoed a bill extending farmworkers the right to unionize.

Tipping said the bills the Legislature passed this year represented “the lowest hanging fruit” when it comes to labor rights for farmworkers. 

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“These are the smallest possible pieces of trying to protect a vulnerable population,” he said. 

As for LD 525, Mills said she “cannot subject our farmers to a complicated new set of labor laws that will require a lawyer just to understand.”

Labor leaders responded swiftly, calling the governor’s actions an embarrassment to the state.

“Governor Mills’ veto sends a clear message to farmworkers that they are of second class status and are not worthy of the same rights and protections other workers enjoy,” said Matt Schlobohm, executive director of the Maine AFL-CIO. “This veto is an embarrassment to the state of Maine and a continuation of a long history of exclusion and exploitation.” 

Arthur Phillips, policy analyst at the Maine Center for Economic Policy who served on the minimum wage committee, said Mills “has reaffirmed farmworkers’ second-class status in Maine’s economy.”

Pointing to the multiple bills related to agricultural workers that the governor has vetoed over the years, Phillips said, “People who milk our cows and harvest our food will remain among the most essential yet unprotected workers in our state, without a right to be paid the minimum wage or even receive a pay stub.” He added that farmworkers, who are “disproportionately people of color and are 4.5 times as likely as others to live in poverty, deserve far better.”

Harnett, who formerly worked as a labor attorney representing agricultural workers, said the governor’s actions do not speak for everyone in state government. 

“I want farmworkers to know that many Maine people, including a majority of those in the Maine House and Senate, do see you and do care about you,” Harnett said.