All of the exemptions that were in place for Ontario farms before the province’s new labour laws came into effect earlier this year will continue unchanged, said the president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture (OFA).
When the government approved the minimum wage hike last year to $14, Bill 148 also made changes to other aspects of the labour law, such as length of work breaks and a maximum number hours per day on overtime. Farms used to be exempt from these rules, but weren’t under the new legislation.
The OFA has been pushing for a return of those exemptions and they are now back in place said OFA president Keith Currie.
“Basically, we are maintaining all of our previous exemptions that we had before, with, of course, the exception being minimum wage,” Currie told Farmers Forum in an email.