40 hours or 60: who decides what rural labor is worth?

Sugar beet worker in Colorado (1938). Source: Library of Congress 

In 2011, this blog post observed that farmworkers:

[R]eceive little protection from the law...[and] are excluded from the National Labor Relations Act.

The National Labor Relations Act gives workers the right to unionize, and the exclusion of farm workers is part of a broader pattern. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 similarly exempted agricultural workers from overtime protections; a carve-out that persists at the federal level today. As the National Employment Law Project has noted, Congress approved this exemption as part of a:

[G]rand compromise that excluded farm and domestic workers - who were overwhelmingly Black - from the protections being afforded to other workers.

Colorado is now testing whether states can succeed where the federal government has not: extending overtime protections to farmworkers without triggering the very harms those protections are meant to prevent. 

In 2021, Colorado Governor Jared Polis signed Senate Bill ("SB") 21-087, the "Farmworker Bill of Rights," which brought agricultural workers under state overtime rules for the first time. The law was phased in gradually, initially kicking in at 60 hours per week, then declining over time. Currently, the law operates through a bifurcated system: workers harvesting outside the peak season are generally paid overtime after 48 hours, while peak-season workers receive overtime after 56 hours. 

Now, five years later, Democrats in the state legislature are split over what comes next. One bill would lower the threshold to 40 hours, matching the standard for other industries. A competing bill would raise it back to 60, essentially returning to where the phase-in began.  

Senator Jessie Danielson has introduced SB 26-081, which would lower the threshold to 40 hours per workweek or 12 hours per workday, matching the standard for most other Colorado workers. Senate Majority Leader Robert Rodriguez is expected to introduce a competing bill that would raise the threshold to 60 hours before overtime applies. 

Farm operators argue that a 40-hour threshold could be fatal. Don Brown, a Yuma County farmer and former state agriculture commissioner, told Colorado Politics:

[If the 40-hour bill passes,] we will have to figure out how to eliminate jobs and mechanize more. 

Peach picker in Palisade, CA (2015).
Source: Library of Congress. 

Bruce Talbott, owner of Talbott Farms, the largest fruit grower on the Western Slope, recently built a new bunkhouse to spread hours across more workers and minimize overtime. Talbott stated: 

All businesses have to live within their means. In the end, it's the farmworker who gets hurt. 

The industry also faces broader challenges. The director of the Colorado Department of Agriculture's market division noted that net farm income is projected to drop to $1.8 billion in 2026 - $400 million lower than the previous year - citing fluctuating markets and low commodity prices. 

Farmworker advocates see the issue differently. Betty Velasquez of Project Protect Food Systems Workers argues:

[Farmworkers] are the people providing food on our tables. They should have access to earn more money as well. 

Advocates also contend that the industry has not produced data showing overtime rules specifically cause harm, and that reduced hours have given workers more time with their families. Yet, the empirical picture is also contested. 

A 2023 study by UC Berkeley researcher Alexandra Hill found that California's overtime law led to reduced hours and earnings for farmworkers after employers shortened workweeks to avoid overtime costs. Hill's continued research found that by 2022:

[California farmworkers] earned about a hundred dollars less per week on average than they would have without the law in place. 

The Colorado debate exposes a structural tension in rural livelihood policy. Agricultural exceptionalism - the legal tradition of treating farm labor as categorically different - was born of a racist compromise in 1938. States like Colorado and California are now experimenting with alternatives. Those experiments produce uneven results, with some states like New York and Oregon offering tax credits to offset higher labor costs while others press forward without such cushions. Workers and operators each claim to speak for the rural interest. 

Senator Danielson insists the state should be doing more to protect farmworkers. Senator Rodriguez frames the dilemma as "death by 1,000 cuts" - water shortages, tariffs, and now labor costs. 

Both are Democrats. Both represent rural livelihoods. Neither has a clean answer.