AUGUSTA, Maine — Gov. Janet Mills has vetoed her own proposal that set out to cover farmworkers under Maine’s minimum wage laws, telling lawmakers Tuesday she took offense to them changing the bill to allow workers to sue over alleged violations.
Tuesday’s veto came after the Democratic governor had unveiled her bill in March following months of feedback from a committee she set up to study the issue after vetoing a similar proposal last year from House Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross, D-Portland.
Mills also vetoed Tuesday a bill from Talbot Ross to allow agricultural workers to engage in union activity, writing she “cannot subject our farmers to a complicated new set of labor laws that will require a lawyer just to understand.” And the governor vetoed a measure requiring the state to negotiate with Casella, which runs the state-owned Juniper Ridge Landfill in Old Town, over operating agreement changes and to ensure the concentration of toxic PFAS chemicals in landfill leachate does not exceed state drinking water standards different from new federal ones.
Farmworker advocates and labor groups sharply criticized Mills for her decision on the minimum wage proposal. The governor’s bill initially put agricultural workers under the state’s $14.15 an hour minimum wage starting Sept. 1, raising that rate annually with cost of living increases.
It also would require employers to keep records of hours that farmworkers work, retain records for at least three years and provide workers with a statement detailing their wages.
But Mills said Tuesday she turned on the bill after the Legislature’s labor committee amended it to allow workers to obtain private counsel and sue employers for alleged violations. Mills instead preferred letting the Maine Department of Labor handle potential violations.
However, Rep. Amy Roeder, D-Bangor, and Sen. Mike Tipping, D-Orono, the labor committee chairs, disputed that by saying Mills sought to insert a private litigation ban without consulting with the panel she set up to study the pay issue.
Mills noted the panel found most Maine farms already pay their workers the minimum wage.
“Knowing that my original bill provided an adequate enforcement remedy, I did not — and still do not — believe 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,” Mills wrote in Tuesday’s veto message.
Mills also said her office informed lawmakers of her concerns and offered a compromise that would allow workers to seek a “right-to-sue letter” from the labor department, but the Democratic-controlled Legislature passed the bill without that change.
“I do not take the decision to veto this bill lightly. I do not want to veto this bill,” Mills wrote. “But the Legislature’s actions leave me little choice. I do not believe Maine farmers should face the prospect of privately initiated lawsuits, which would almost certainly lead to losing more farms in the long run.”
Maine has been among more than a dozen states that do not apply their minimum wage laws to most farmworkers, who are instead subject to the federal $7.25 an hour minimum wage and left out of mandatory overtime laws. This year’s measure initially appeared like it had enough support from labor groups, farming organizations and Mills to pass, with compromises such as not requiring farmworkers to benefit from overtime laws.
But Mills noted the Maine Potato Board withdrew its support after lawmakers added the private right of action provision, adding that Maine has lost more than 1,100 farms since 2012 and that the vast majority of operations here are family owned rather than “corporate factory-farms.”
Mills added she remains “strongly supportive of establishing a clean state minimum wage for agricultural workers.”
Maine AFL-CIO Executive Director Matt Schlobohm called the governor’s decision an “embarrassment to the state of Maine and a continuation of a long history of exclusion and exploitation.” Thom Harnett, a former Gardiner mayor and state lawmaker who served on the farmworker pay committee as Talbot Ross’ designee, called it a “slap in the face.”
Mano a Mano, a nonprofit advocating for migrant farmworkers in Maine, said Mills is “vetoing justice for one of the most marginalized and impoverished communities in Maine.”
Lawmakers will return to Augusta in the near future to vote on overriding any of the governor’s vetoes. A two-thirds majority is required to overturn a veto.