{"id":65512,"date":"2019-11-22T10:28:53","date_gmt":"2019-11-22T17:28:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/draft-policy-raises-bar-for-colorados-exempt-workers\/"},"modified":"2019-11-22T17:28:53","modified_gmt":"2019-11-22T17:28:53","slug":"draft-policy-raises-bar-for-colorados-exempt-workers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/draft-policy-raises-bar-for-colorados-exempt-workers\/","title":{"rendered":"Draft policy raises bar for Colorado\u2019s exempt workers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Rafael
Rafael Cueto Rios stands with his wife and a group of workers at a news conference outside the Colorado Department of Labor offices in Denver on Aug. 28. The group called for Colorado\u2019s minimum wage laws to apply to everyone.<\/span>Jesse Paul\/The Colorado Sun<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

More low-wage workers will be covered by the Colorado laws governing overtime pay and breaks under a<\/p>\n

The draft represents a major win for Colorado labor groups, that have long been pushing for the changes and say they\u2019re decades in the making. Although the organizations didn\u2019t get everything they wanted, they were still celebrating Monday\u2019s announcement as a major improvement.<\/p>\n

Dennis Dougherty, executive director of the AFL-CIO in Colorado, called the draft \u201can important step towards changing that reality for workers across the state.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis order helps ensure that more Colorado employees are fairly compensated, receive basic job protections and are not forced to work excessively long hours without being paid an extra penny,\u201d Dougherty said in a written statement.<\/p>\n

Currently, there are only four classes of workers covered by Colorado\u2019s overtime and break protections, including people who have jobs in retail and service, commercial support, food and beverage, and health and medical. That\u2019s left construction workers, farm workers, manufacturing employees and domestic home helpers outside the rules.<\/p>\n

The proposed policy changes released by the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment would change that, bringing most professions under the broader umbrella.<\/p>\n

However, while the draft calls for agricultural workers to be granted some breaks, it doesn\u2019t afford them overtime and minimum wage protections, a carveout that labor organizations were immediately concerned about.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are among the most marginalized and vulnerable workers in our state, and they\u2019ve been historically excluded from many critical protections,\u201d said David Seligman, executive director of the labor organization Towards Justice. \u201cThe CDLE should go further in ensuring that our basic minimum labor standards are extended to everyone.<\/p>\n

Also under the proposed rules, starting in March, salaried workers who make less than $42,500 a year must be granted overtime pay. That threshold is slated to increase annually to $57,500 by 2026, the draft says.<\/p>\n

Under current law, most salaried workers don\u2019t have to be paid overtime as long as the amount they are making each year is roughly equivalent to minimum wage.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are going to be urging the agency to cut back on that ramp-up period,\u201d Seligman said. \u201cOverwork and underpay are a problem right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

The final rules are slated to be released on Jan. 10 after a public hearing on Dec. 16 and a comment deadline that ends on Dec. 31. The Colorado Department of Labor and Employment drafted the rules and will decide on their final version.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Proposal represents a major win for Colorado labor groups<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":65513,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-65512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65512\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65512"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=65512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}