Corina Diaz earns $1 an hour working at an onion farm in central New York. She works at least 12 hours a day, seven days a week.

A single mom, Diaz spends a significant chunk of her paycheck to cover daily child care expenses for her three children while she works.

"If I don't go to work then I lose my job," Diaz said. "There is no time to spend with my family, but if I don't work we don't have money to eat."

Diaz is one of thousands of farmworkers pushing for passage in Albany of the Farmworkers Fair Labor Practices Act. If approved, the measure would give the 80,000 farmworkers across the state:

• one unpaid day of rest every week;
• the right to overtime pay;
• the choice to form a union and collectively bargain;
• access to sanitary housing and working conditions; and
• workers compensation.

"It's shameful that farmworkers, who provide food for New Yorkers all across the state, still are denied access to basic civil and human rights," NYSUT Executive Vice President Alan Lubin said.

The bill passed the Assembly and was moved out of the Senate Labor Committee for the first time ever. (Log on to www.nysut.org for updates on this and other pending legislation.)

For Diaz, the right to join a union could mean more stability for her family.

"Sometimes there is work and sometimes there isn't," she said. "We need a union to help us when there is no work. I just want to support my family."