Overworked and Underpaid: H-2A Herders in Colorado

Abstract

"Throughout much of rural western Colorado, a virtually unknown and unrecognized workforce toils alone in extreme cold or heat, making approximately $2 per hour. These workers are migrants, legally employed by Colorado ranchers to herd their livestock. They are in the United States as part of a program for temporary foreign labor called the H-2A program, which allows U.S. employers to bring in foreign farm workers if there are insufficient U.S. workers to meet the employers’ needs. Herders work for pay that on a per-hour basis is closer to volunteering than it is to earning minimum wage. They are required to be on-call 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, living in small campers without electricity, running water or a bathroom. Colorado’s migrant herders are a crucial part of the ranching industry. Most frequently coming from Peru, Chile and Mexico, herders, who rarely speak English, come to Colorado and other Western states searching for better employment opportunities. In some cases they find these opportunities; in the majority of cases they do not. Colorado Legal Services’ Migrant Farm Worker Division (CLS), with Professor Thomas Acker of Mesa State College, surveyed 93 herders over a two-year period to document a variety of issues, including their pay, their employers’ control over their lives, their living and working conditions, their work contracts and their general opinions about their work situation." -- quoted from Executive Summary