With the beginning of the new year also begins the gradual lowering of the threshold for when farm workers will qualify for overtime pay in New York.

Starting Jan. 1, 2024, the overtime threshold for those employees will be lowered from 60 to 56 hours a week. It will then be reduced by four hours a year until 2032, when it will reach 40 hours a week.

The initiative has been in the works for some time. Labor officials signed off on the change after a two-year process with a wage board composed of farm workers, advocacy organizations, agriculture producers and labor unions. The state Department of Labor gave final approval back in February.

The change has been cheered by advocacy groups like the New York Civil Liberties Union, which has argued the higher threshold for overtime is a vestige of racially motivated labor policy from nearly a century ago. But agriculture organizations like the New York Farm Bureau have opposed the lowered threshold over concerns smaller producers would be adversely affected by the change, which is not reflective of the realities of running a farming operation.

The change will also be coupled with tax credits meant to offset the financial cost of the change.