Republican candidate for governor Lee Zeldin on Monday vowed to reverse an expected lowering of the hourly threshold for when overtime pay would kick in for New York farmworkers, calling it something the agriculture industry can't afford. 

Zeldin's opposition to the threshold change comes as state labor officials are due to consider a proposal to lower the ceiling from 60 hours a week to 40. 

"There's a decision right now in front of this state," Zeldin said during a visit to an Albany County farm on Monday. "Do they want to have the backs of farming in New York or not?"

A wage board at the state Department of Labor is expected to meet next month to accept a final report recommending the overtime threshold be lowered. Zeldin vowed if elected he would work to overturn any change in the farm overtime rules. 

"My commitment is to kill this change to the threshold. It should be 60 hours, not 40 hours," he said. "It's not about changing it to 40 hours and then trying to slap bandaids on it." 

Zeldin was flanked by Republican candidates and officeholders, including U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, who have also called on labor officials to not follow through with the move. They have argued farmers cannot afford the additional costs and that a farm does not square with a traditional 9 to 5 working day. 

Stefanik expects the overtime issue will motivate Republican voters this November.

"Farmers, rural New York, we vote and we're going to vote for Lee Zeldin because the future of agriculture is at stake," Stefanik said. 

But supporters of the change have pointed to Gov. Kathy Hochul and state lawmakers backing a tax credit in the state budget that is meant to subsidize the cost of the overtime change. The threshold itself will be lowered over the next decade to allow farms to adjust. 

And Lisa Zucker of the New York Civil Liberties Union in an interview last week said the move is meant to fix what she calls a racist system that exclude farmworkers. 

"I would like to see the Department of Labor do what should have been done 80 years ago," Zucker said. "Farmworkers have been waiting over 80 years to put an end to what was really a racist exclusion to the fair labor standards act."