In what could be the last late-night debate of the 2021 legislative session, the House held its final vote Monday night on Senate Bill 87, a bill to grant farmworkers the right to join unions and engage in collective bargaining.

Under SB 87, workers have the right to seek action in the courts for retaliation or other complaints, require that they be paid minimum wage and overtime pay, and that employers provide workers with transportation and access to “key service providers,” including health care providers, clergy and lawyers. They also would be entitled to rest and meal breaks during the day, and a ban on short-handled hoes, cited as a tool that causes injury because the worker must bend over for hours to use it.

Republicans have warned that the bill will devastate the ag industry, and that it is further proof of Democrats’ war on rural Colorado and on agriculture in particular. That’s a claim tied to Gov. Jared Polis, who has in the past excluded Eastern Plains residents from boards and commissions important to rural Colorado, appointed an animal rights activist to the state vet board who stated that dairy farmers sexually abuse their cows, and advocated for the Department of Agriculture to promote vegan alternatives to beef, Colorado’s number one agricultural export.

Rep. Rod Pelton, R-Cheyenne Wells, a farmer and rancher, said he was sent to the Capitol to tell urban legislators about the story of ag. Senate Bill 87 “is the Front Range and urban folks telling farmers and ranchers how they should operate their businesses … They don’t have a clue about what it takes to make a living and how to survive in this industry,” he said. “We’re about to cripple ag in a significant way … it will take the little producers out of the game as they cannot meet the requirements in this bill.”

Choking back tears, Rep. Janice Rich, R-Grand Junction, said she grew up knowing that farmers were held in high esteem. “That’s not the case today. This tears at the very fabric of this country … The rural-urban divide continues.” 

The future of Colorado agriculture is going to change, said Rep. Richard Holtorf, R-Akron, a farmer and rancher. He recounted conversations in which people have told him they want to move to an ag-friendly state that doesn’t undermine what they’re trying to do.

SB 87 sponsor Rep. Monica Duran, D-Wheat Ridge, said what’s been lost in the conversation is the voice of the workers the bill is intended to help.

“I listened to both sides. The only thing that I agree with is that this is the end of an era, an era where the voices of our agricultural workers will be heard, not ignored, where they will have better working conditions, breaks, and treated like human beings,” she said, adding that she could not believe that the conversation on how this would end an era, and it would be bad for farmers or ranchers. “We have yet to talk about our ag workers who are day in and day out suffering.”

House Majority Leader Daneya Esgar of Pueblo told the House that when the bill was introduced, she was torn. It’s no secret that she fights for workers rights, she said. But she also comes from an area where she appreciates agriculture and the struggles of her local farmers.

“It’s not a joke that I’m a champion of Pueblo chiles, because I know what it means for my area, what that product means to the area,” Esgar said.

The bill isn’t exactly what the advocates wanted, nor what the opponents wanted, she said. Not every farm has an issue with how they treat their workers. But there are some where the issues brought forward in this bill are happening. “We have to right that,” he said.

Rep. Marc Catlin, R-Montrose, the ranking member on the ag committee as well as its vice-chair, told the House that “there may be operators who treat people less than, and I would like to root them out. That kind of activity in this day and age is unacceptable.”

But the system is not built for the producers and the laborers, Catlin said. Americans pay less for food now than they did in the 1950s and 1960s. The system is built so that when the ag crop leaves the farm, it makes more money for the people down the supply chain than it does for the farmer who produced it. 

“It’s an honorable profession…and we have taken very good care of the people who help us,” including helping them become American citizens. 

The bill’s other co-sponsor, Rep. Karen McCormick, D-Longmont, told the House she decided to carry the bill, not as an attack on ag, but as a hope for integrity and pride in the ag industry. This bill will delegate to the Department of Labor and Employment guidelines and to listen to all the voices, and how to come up with overtime rules, she said. “It’s important to take into account the uniqueness of this industry.”

Much was given up in the spirit of compromise, she said, such as sending provisions to rulemaking rather than putting them into the bill. “This is to help those who have been asking for help for decades,” McCormick said.

The bill passed on a party-line 40-24 vote with Rep. Don Valdez, D-La Jara, voting with the Republicans. It now goes back to the Senate for concurrence on amendments.