The Colorado State Senate adopted a bill Wednesday that changes the overtime rules for farmworkers in Colorado four years after the state legislature adopted groundbreaking legislation to protect the same workers.
The proposed legislation, SB26-121, would increase the amount of hours ag workers put in before overtime kicks in. Farm workers currently earn overtime pay after 48 hours as a result of the 2021 Agricultural Workers’ Rights. The senate bill changes it to 56 hours.
“This truly is not about competing interests of producers and a workforce,” Sen. Cleave Simpson of Alamosa said during a senate committee hearing this week. “This proposal really does get to a spot that creates a system that both, I’d like to say can thrive, but at the very least can survive where we are right now.”
Colorado is rare in that it has comprehensive state legislation that outlines the rights of agricultural workers, including collective bargaining rights. Wages for most farmworkers in America are based on federal minimum wage standards with no qualification for overtime pay, which made Colorado’s 2021 farmworker rights’ law unique but with heavy opposition from producers.
Watch for the next episode of The Valley Pod which goes on location with San Luis Valley sheep rancher JD Schmidt.
Simpson said he was a last-minute Republican minority party sponsor to the legislation at the request of Colorado Senate Majority Leader Robert Rodriguez of Aurora, who co-authored the bill.
“I got asked to sponsor at the last minute, I think as a trusted, respected legislator motivated only by doing things to help the workers and producers,” Simpson said in a message to Alamosa Citizen.
The bill had its opposition in the Democrat-controlled state senate and was moved to the Colorado House of Representatives on a 19-16 affirmative vote. Matthew Martinez, who represents the San Luis Valley in the Colorado House, is co-sponsoring the legislation along with Ty Winter, the Republican assistant house minority leader representing southeast Colorado.
Hunter Knapp, who works for Project Protect Food Systems Workers, said it was ironic the state senate would adopt the “Overtime Threshold for Agricultural Employees” during Farmworker Awareness Week.
“Not the right move to show appreciation for farm workers by rolling back their rights at the beginning of the season,” Knapp said.
Martinez will be under pressure from the Alamosa-based Los Promotores del Valle de San Luis organization, which advocates for farmworkers, to oppose the legislation he is co-authoring when the Colorado House takes up ‘Overtime threshold for agricultural employees.’