FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Hunter Knapp; [email protected]; (970) 846-9988

On Farm Workers Day, the Agricultural Workers’ Rights Coalition stands in solidarity with the workers who sustain Colorado’s food system. At the very moment Colorado should be honoring farm workers, lawmakers are advancing efforts to roll back a fundamental labor protection: the right to overtime pay. 

Farm workers are the backbone of Colorado agriculture, yet they have long been excluded from equal labor protections. The Agricultural Workers’ Rights Act (SB 21-087) marked a long-overdue step toward fairness by establishing some overtime pay protections, despite failing to provide farm workers with the same protections afforded to most other workers in our state.

Today, that progress is at risk.

Colorado Senate Bill 26-121 would move Colorado in the wrong direction by raising the overtime threshold to 56 hours per week. This would represent a step backward for agricultural workers who already endure some of the most difficult conditions of any workforce. A 56-hour work week before overtime is not fairness. It is exclusion. It is a policy choice that promotes excessive work hours without fair compensation for the benefit of the producers of dairies, feedlots and ranches. 

This potential rollback is about health, safety and dignity, not just wages. Farm workers routinely work for 10 to 12 hours, often in extreme heat or freezing cold. Still, Colorado lacks meaningful daily overtime protections, even after 12 hours in a single day. Without a daily standard, employers can require grueling, consecutive long days without triggering overtime pay, increasing the risk of injury, chronic pain, and exhaustion. 

Agricultural workers face heightened risks due to heat exposure, repetitive strain, dangerous equipment, and limited access to healthcare. Overtime protections are one of the few safeguards that can remove the incentive to structure farming practices in a way that is harmful to worker health. Raising the weekly threshold to 56 hours would weaken that safeguard at a time when stronger protections are needed.

Supporters of SB 26-121 claim that changes to overtime are necessary because workers want to work extremely long hours. But what workers want is fair pay and fair treatment. SB 26-121 would cost workers at least $60 in any week where they work 56 hours or more. Just five years ago, Colorado took important steps to recognize farm workers as essential workers deserving of fundamental rights. Rolling back protections now undermines that progress.

On the first Farm Workers Day in Colorado, the Agricultural Workers’ Rights Coalition calls on lawmakers to:

• Reject rollbacks to the weekly overtime pay threshold;
• Establish meaningful daily overtime standards to prevent excessive work days; and
• Stand with the people who feed our communities.

Farm workers deserve dignity, fair pay, and safe working conditions. A 56-hour work week without overtime pay is not economic justice. It is a continuation of the inequities that Colorado has committed to fixing.

The Agricultural Workers’ Rights Coalition stands with farm workers and urges the Colorado legislature to do the same.