WHERE IS THE UNION LABEL?
Monday, August 16th 1999, 2:11AM IN EXPOSING THAT the horrid conditions suffered by tens of thousands of New York’s farmworkers are codified in state law, the first installment of a series of Daily News special editorials earlier this month placed blame squarely on a cowed Legislature and a complacent labor movement. But while the lawmakers particularly in the GOP-led state Senate remain in thrall to the influential Farm Bureau lobby, labor is complacent no more. Or so its leaders say. Denis Hughes, the new president of the state AFL-CIO, has said the plight of New York’s farmworkers must become labor’s crusade. And he is right. The millions of men and women who enjoy the protections of New York’s strong labor laws cannot be indifferent to farmworkers who have low-paying, backbreaking jobs and are denied those same protections from the right to collective bargaining to overtime pay to a day off per week to unemployment and disability insurance. The most shocking aspect of the farmworke
