Project Protect Promotora Network:
2023 Overtime Wage Survey
The primary role of the Project Protect Promotora Network is to provide outreach to agricultural workers and others who live in rural, agricultural communities. Project Protect Promotoras specialize in culturally and linguistically tailored outreach to educate agricultural workers, distribute resources, and facilitate access to service providers. Through this community service, the team members build strong connections with the community, allowing us to collect unprecedented authentic and verified data from agricultural workers. This research focuses on Overtime Wage data and how rules and regulations for overtime are being implemented in Colorado for agricultural workers.
Overtime Rule Implementation for Colorado Agricultural Workers in 2023
With the passage of SB 21-087: Concerning Agricultural Workers’ Rights, agricultural workers in Colorado were granted the right to overtime pay. 2023 marked the first phase-in period of these new rules and regulations, wherein overtime pay was to be paid to workers who worked more than 60 hours in a one-week period. This research set out to increase the Colorado Agricultural sector’s understanding of the implementation of the new overtime rules and provide context for the agricultural labor market. This study was funded by the Emerging Issues Grant program of the High Plains Intermountain Center for Agricultural Health and Safety (HICAHS) located at Colorado State University.
The anonymous survey, available in both English and Spanish, was administered between May 27, 2024 and July 31, 2024 by the six Promotora Network Regional Directors. Targeted recruitment strategies ensured that the sample was diversified across employers, agricultural sectors, and geographies resulting in a representative cross-section of the agricultural workforce.
The anonymity and safety of all stakeholders is of utmost importance for this project. This survey did not collect data on employee names, employer names, counties, zip codes, or any other personal data that could identify either the worker or the employer. Before analysis, the data went through an additional cleaning process to redact any qualitative data deemed sensitive.
To date, this is the largest survey of agricultural workers in Colorado.
Table of Contents
Demographics of 593 survey respondents
436 Men
(73.5%)
157 Women
(26.5%)
19.7%
workers employed on an H-2A visa.*
*H-2A visa workers account for 11-15% of the Colorado agriculture workforce. This project set a quota of 85 total H-2A workers, but due to eagerness to participate this community was oversampled by 32 workers.)
Primary Language | Frequency (percentage) |
|---|---|
Spanish | 529 (89.2%) |
English | 33 (5.5%) |
Qʼanjobʼal | 14 (2.4%) |
Cora | 7 (1.2%) |
Nahuatl | 7 (1.2%) |
Karen | 3 (0.5%) |
This bar chart shows the distribution of worker ages, split by gender.
This bar chart shows the distribution of workers by agricultural sector, split by H-2A status.
This bar chart shows the cumulative count of workers by month, split by pay type.
Total Workforce Summary
This study provides a measured baseline for the level of implementation of Weekly Overtime Requirements under the first phase-in period. The study found that 19.2% of the workforce is working under salaried employment (likely classified as exempt), 79.6% are paid hourly, and 1.2% at a piece rate. Overall, 37.6% of surveyed respondents worked more than 60 hours per week at least once throughout 2023. Some of these workers were employed under salaried contracts and indicated that their employment contract did not include overtime pay.
This pie chart shows the total counts of workers by whether they were paid overtime.
This pie chart shows the total counts of workers by their pay types.
This pie chart shows the total counts of workers by whether they worked more than 60 hours in a week during 2023.
Salaried Workers
Overall, 19.2% of agricultural workers were paid by salary in 2023. Of those workers, 77.2% were employed in livestock (43%) or dairies (34.2%). Within the livestock and dairy industries, this accounts for 41.7% of the employees, which is a much higher ratio compared to field crops where only 7.8% of employees were salaried in 2023. While there are fewer salaried jobs in field crops and orchards/vineyards, some year-round workers tasked with irritation, pesticide application, or maintenance were also paid by salary.
Most salary workers are not paid overtime. More than half (50.9%) indicated that there was at least one week in 2023 wherein they worked more than 60 hours. However, many workers explained that their work contracts said that they were exempt from overtime pay due to their salaried employment status. Only 11% of salaried workers were paid the 50% premium for the overtime hours they worked.
This pie chart shows the distribution of salaried workers across the sector.
This bar chart groups workers by the agricultural sector, and shows the counts of workers split by whether they worked more than 60 hours in a week during 2023.
Hourly Workers
Overall, 79.6% of agricultural workers were paid an hourly wage in 2023. Most hourly workers (65%) did not work more than 60 hours in a week in 2023. Men were more likely than women to have worked overtime hours at some point in 2023. Of the hourly workers who worked more than 60 hours in a single week, 29.5% were not paid overtime wages for some or all of those hours (n=193). Some of these workers noted that they were paid the normal wage rate for overtime hours, but not the 50% premium on their wages.
Seemingly, most workers who are working in excess of 60 hours a week are paid overtime wages. Workers noted that their employers were limiting hours to 56 hours or less a week, a noted change for workers who have been employed in agriculture for multiple years.
This pie chart shows if hourly workers were paid overtime in 2023.
This bar graph groups workers by the number of months they worked in 2023, and shows the counts of workers split by whether they are paid overtime.
Violation Reporting
Wage theft and wage law violations were reported in 12.6% of the survey sample, however, only 5 in 75 workers took action to try to correct the error in their pay.
(Tip: On the pie chart, click "Never" to filter the pie to only show people who experienced wage discrepancies.)
The workers who did not attempt to resolve the pay issue explained that there are several reasons they did not take action to fix the pay error, however the most frequently listed reason was not wanting to cause issues when their employer is providing their home.
This pie chart shows if workers were paid less than the hours they worked in 2023.
Explore!
Click the heads below to see examples of why 70 people did not report their wage discrepancies.
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Appendix
This survey was created through a community review process that used workers' narratives and personal experiences to inform the scripting and formatting of the questions. The survey design was formatted with the hope that a similar project could be replicated in future phase-in periods to track changes over time. Both the Spanish and English surveys underwent a test-run for validity before large-space implementation.