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Colorado sheepherders have been exploited for decades. The government has done little to stop it.

ROUTT NATIONAL FOREST — Ignacio Alvarado can still feel the presence of sheep as he winds his way through the rolling hills north of Craig.

The sounds are ingrained in his mind 30 years later — the low bellow of the momma sheep, the shrill shrieks of the babies.

He points out the aspen trees where he used to scrawl his name and native country, Chile. These messages were the closest thing he had to interacting with another human for weeks at a time as he migrated 3,000 sheep from meadow to meadow.

The endless solitude, he said, is like a prison. You’re tied, from morning til evening, to the whims of the flock.

“I couldn’t have any days off, any time to leave the animals alone,” Alvarado said in Spanish through a translator. “Don’t you think that’s slavery?”

He remembers the 50-gallon tank of water he was given for cooking and drinking. In the winter, the tank froze, forcing Alvarado to melt snow to drink. In heat the summer, the water reached scalding temperatures.

If you got sick, he said, you had to figure out how to help yourself because the boss only came every 15 days. He didn’t see a dollar for three years, he said, only getting paid when his term finished.

“When I came to this country, I came happy,” he said. “Quickly I was disillusioned.”

Alvarado’s experience hardly stands as an outlier. Colorado sheepherders are routinely exploited and abused as they tend flocks — alone — through the unrelenting backcountry, The Denver Post found as part of a three-part investigation into seasonal migrant labor. Some are given little rations to last them days. Others have their passports and immigration documents taken as soon as they arrive in Colorado.

Herders say they’re threatened with violence or told they’ll be sent home early if they don’t comply with orders. Paychecks often come late.

With few Americans willing to do this challenging job, Colorado ranchers rely on the H-2A visa program to fill their needs. The visa allows agricultural employers to hire foreign workers for jobs they cannot get domestic laborers to fill.

The program has exploded in Colorado and nationally in recent years, much to the dismay of labor groups that say it’s ripe for abuse.

The Post’s investigation found federal and state regulators have failed to keep workers safe or ensure they’re paid correctly and on time. Nearly one in six H-2A employers in Colorado have violated federal labor laws, the newspaper found. But the U.S. Department of Labor hardly ever bars these companies from bringing workers again the following year. The state has also rarely used its power to prevent problematic employers from bringing workers year after year, The Post found.

The few companies in Colorado that have been booted from the federal program have all been sheepherding operations. Wage theft and improper cost-shifting onto farmworkers are also pervasive among Colorado employers who take part in the H-2A program. But there’s a growing movement among the state’s farms to adhere to more stringent worker protections.

The U.S. Department of Labor and the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment declined interview requests for this series. In a statement, the federal Labor Department said it has launched a national initiative to focus enforcement and outreach on the agricultural industry.

The agency “is committed to protecting and enforcing the rights of farmworkers in Colorado and throughout the United States, including temporary workers employed under the H-2A program,” Juan Rodriguez, a Labor Department spokesperson, said via email.

The Post’s yearlong investigation included on-the-ground reporting from across Colorado and interviews with more than three dozen sources, including migrant workers, growers, state and federal labor officials, H-2A experts, outreach workers and attorneys. The newspaper also reviewed hundreds of pages of federal labor investigations as well as state and federal lawsuits.

“It’s such a laughable facade,” said Tom Acker, former board president of the Hispanic Affairs Project, a Western Slope organization that works with immigrant communities. “Workers know it’s abusive. They put up with it because they’re getting paid better than they would in Mexico or Peru.”

The sheep industry maintains that workers understand what they’re getting into when they come to the United States and that ranchers are being attacked by “overzealous immigrant rights groups.”

“Agriculture is hard work,” said Bonnie Brown-Eddy, executive director of the Colorado Wool Growers Association.

Origins of Colorado sheepherding

Sheepherding, at its core, hasn’t changed much since biblical times.

The beginning of sheep in the West dates to the 1500s, when Spanish explorers first brought the woolly mammals to the Colorado Plateau.

Early on, immigrants from Greece and the Basque Country in Spain arrived in the American West to tend sheep. Generations later, many of the same families have continued the family tradition.

“Sheep made the West,” said Andrew Gulliford, a professor at Fort Lewis College and author of “The Woolly West.” California’s gold rush in the 1840s, and the subsequent boom in Colorado, meant a rapid rise in population. And those people had to eat.

World War II, with GIs scarfing down canned mutton, brought a boon to the American sheep industry. But per capita consumption has dropped significantly in the ensuing decades, from around 5 pounds per year in the 1960s to less than one pound a year today. Competition from other meat sources — pork, beef, poultry — contributed to this decline.

As a result, there are just 5 million sheep in the U.S. today — less than one-tenth of the 56 million that were grazing American land in 1940, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture figures.

Colorado is a leader in domestic wool production, accounting for 2.18 million pounds in 2021 — second only to California — according to the Department of Agriculture. And the state ranks sixth in lamb production, a more lucrative crop by dollar volume.

There are some 2,000 sheepherders brought to the United States under the H-2A program, including roughly 320 in Colorado. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, herders increasingly started coming from South America. Now, around 80% hail from Peru — specifically the highlands of Huancayo — where workers for generations have tended flocks at extreme altitudes.

“You need strong men for this work — not just physically strong, but mentally strong,” said Luis F. Solari, Peru’s consul general in Denver. “The farmer can’t do work that Peruvians can do. A Marine would only last two weeks in these conditions.”

But it’s lonely, exhausting work. During the summer, sheepherders graze their animals in high-mountain meadows, moving the flocks to lower elevations in the winter.

Sheep have no natural defenses so they must be protected from predator attacks 24 hours a day. Bears, coyotes and now wolves stand ready to pounce on the appetizing prey.

“That’s why shepherds are necessary and have been so since biblical times,” the Colorado Wool Growers Association said in a 2013 informational video.

Most of the time, it’s one herder for every 1,000 or 2,000 head of sheep, meandering through the vast Colorado wilderness.

“They are alone here,” Solari said. “No family, no woman.”

Hardly any Americans are interested in the job, ranchers say.

In 2014, there were, at most, 18 sheepherders in the nation who were U.S. citizens, according to the American Sheep Industry Association. Two of the largest farm-labor contractors in 2018 had approximately 2,000 herder jobs to fill. Only two or three qualified American workers applied, the association said.

“There’s no one that wants to be alone with sheep 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” said Steve Raftopoulos, a Craig rancher, in the informational video. “(Americans) are so used to their 8-to-5 jobs where they get off at 5 and go home, watch TV and have a beer.”

Herding, due to the nature of the work, represents an entirely different job than other H-2A gigs — so much so that the Department of Labor created special procedures governing range work.

Other workers pick produce or prune trees for a certain amount of time each week, but, at the end of the day, can go home to the same place and cook dinner or go into town. Herders are on call every hour of every day. For months, they’re alone on the open range.

H-2A range workers can stay in the U.S. for up to three years without going back to their home countries, while other laborers can only come for part of each year.

The housing for non-range guest workers has rigorous standards certified by the state labor department. Sheepherders, however, mainly live in portable trailers called “campitos.” They regularly lack running water, heat or refrigeration. These mobile housing units, under federal law, may be self-certified by an employer.

“It’s a hard life; it’s a real hard life,” Cliff Hoopes, a third-generation sheep shearer, told The Post last year. “It’s not for everyone.”

“Nobody even knows they exist”

All these conditions represent the perfect storm for violating human rights, advocates and experts say.

Workers are tied to their employers. They don’t speak the language. Most don’t know their rights and fear being sent home for speaking up. These factors exist for all H-2A laborers, experts say, but they’re especially heightened for those dispersed in remote Western terrain without cellphone service.

“It’s a completely invisible population,” said Jennifer Lee, a former Colorado Legal Services attorney who authored a 2010 report on herder working conditions. “Nobody even knows they exist.”

Federal data analyzed by The Post shows a significant number of Colorado ranchers and sheepherding operations have violated labor laws.

Since 2015, the earliest online data set from the Department of Labor, 420 Colorado companies have brought H-2A workers to the state. Seventy of those firms, or 16%, have been found to have violated federal labor laws at least once. Of those violators, 28 — or 40% — have been sheepherding or ranching employers.

These companies accrued, on average, more than 14 violations per investigation, the data shows. The Labor Department has fined these firms nearly $283,000 in all — or an average of $9,100 per investigation.

Federal officials found that 20 herding or ranching employers in Colorado stole wages from migrant workers on at least one occasion, totaling more than $260,000. “Stolen wages” includes both payments that were never made, and those made after they were due. The highest total came from the Slash EV Ranch in northwest Colorado, which was ordered to pay more than $86,000 in back wages.

Even these numbers represent a vast undercounting of violations, experts say, given the Department of Labor’s lack of enforcement capabilities.

Workers told The Post they came to this country seeking a better life for themselves and their families back home. What they found in the U.S., though, was nothing like they expected.

Alvarado arrived in Colorado in 1990 on an H-2A visa from his native Chile to herd sheep for $650 a month. He often worked 20-hour days in the mountains outside Craig, meaning his take-home pay came out to less than $1 an hour. He said he didn’t see a day off in his three years.

The salary has since gone up and workers now have cellphones. But the rest of the job conditions remain the same more than 30 years later, Alvarado said.

Following his herding stint, Alvarado has spent two decades conducting outreach work for legal aid and advocacy organizations, driving hours through the West to bring men winter clothes, boots, warm gloves and jackets.

“They don’t have anyone to come and see them,” Alvarado said. “No family, nobody they can talk to. I do it for the humanity.”

Alfredo Conovilca arrived in the U.S. in 2008 on an H-2A visa to work on a ranch in Montrose. The herding gig, which he learned about from a university friend, represented a good opportunity to make some money and return home.

But the Peruvian quickly realized the living conditions were quite poor. He worked until 11 p.m. or midnight many days, sleeping three or four hours a night.

With no heat in his trailer, he used a wood stove for both cooking and warmth. The rancher gave him a little rice, potatoes and some handmade bread — no meat, no milk.

The operation’s owners took away his passport at the beginning of his stay, Conovilca said. They constantly threatened him with immigration authorities and his own safety, he said.

“They’d show you weapons,” he said in Spanish through an interpreter. “‘One is for killing coyotes; one is for killing people.’”

One time, Conovilca asked the rancher to take him to the hospital. He was feeling ill with pain in his back — the result of a kidney issue from not having enough water. The rancher said the medical care would be too expensive, Conovilca said.

Instead, the herder was forced to ask his family in Peru to send him medicine.

“Tell me if that isn’t semi-slavery,” said Conovilca, who is now back in Peru. “We go to the U.S. under a legal system. We’re not violating any laws, but once we get there, they are violating all sorts of laws against us.”

The Labor Department has not initiated any investigations into that ranch’s operations and it continues to bring H-2A workers.

A 2010 survey by Colorado Legal Services — the most recent one conducted — found herders work for pay that on a “per-hour basis is closer to volunteering than it is to earning minimum wage.”

The report, titled “Overworked and Underpaid,” also found:

• Almost three-quarters of herders reported having no days off for an entire year.
• More than 80% were not allowed to leave the ranch.
• More than one-third received wages less than once a month.
• Nearly half said they did not have the opportunity to read their employment contracts.
• 85% reported they were never permitted to engage in social activities.

“It’s not just one bad apple rancher,” said Lee, the report’s author. She and other worker advocates said that, even years later, working conditions lag. “It’s the whole system that allows this exploitation to happen.”

Brown-Eddy, of the Colorado Wool Growers Association, defended the working conditions for herders, saying workers have cellphones and can call for help in emergencies.

More challenging than herding, she said, is getting city folks to understand the nature of ranch work. She compared the campitos in which herders live to the trendy tiny home movement.

“It’s frustrating that people from urban areas decide this is abusive or wrong because they don’t understand it,” Brown-Eddy said.

Most of these men eat better in the U.S. than they do back home, Raftopoulos, the Craig rancher, said in a video.

“It’s a nomadic life; they’re used to nomadic lives,” he said. “Most of these men in South America live in villages, and what they do is they herd sheep. So it’s nothing different than what they’ve done.”

Abuses unchecked for decades

These abuses, though, have been going largely unchecked in Colorado for decades.

In September 2000, authorities raided the John Peroulis & Sons Sheep ranch in Craig.

Ten herders said they had been beaten and spit on, lacked clean water for drinking or bathing, did not receive enough food, had their passports and visas confiscated and their mail destroyed.

The workers talked of beatings, verbal abuse and an “atmosphere of constant humiliation that one former employee compared to slavery,” Westword reported in 2001. One herder claimed the Peroulises had even burned a Bible he was using to teach himself English.

Another herder said an entire month’s rations included a pound of sheep’s liver, a sheep’s head, four cans of beans, four cans of tomatoes, three cans of evaporated milk, onions and half a sack of potatoes. He lost 30 pounds that year.

“Sometimes we were hungry for days and didn’t have food,” Lolo Casas, a 22-year-old Peruvian who worked for the family for eight months in 1998, testified as part of a federal lawsuit brought by the Department of Labor.

Federal investigators found Peroulis & Sons gave workers food depending on how long they had worked for him or how hard they worked.

Workers said the owners berated them for writing too many letters and didn’t provide wages when due. Two herders told federal investigators that they asked for medicine “but were told by Stan and Louis Peroulis to die.”

The Moffat County Sheriff’s Office investigated the beating of one of the herders but declined to bring charges.

“It’s a hard case for us because the Peroulises are a good family,” Moffat County undersheriff Jerry Hoberg told Westword at the time. “Any time you have employees, they may have sour grapes.”

In 2010, a pair of Peruvian herders sued the family in federal court, alleging the ranchers physically abused them, garnished their wages, confiscated their passports and left them hungry. The conditions were so bad in Craig that both workers walked off the ranch, with one roaming for 10 hours to find help.

The Peroulises denied the allegations in court filings and the parties settled outside of court.

A third-party recruiting firm, Western Range Association, at one point stopped certifying H-2A workers for the ranch due to ongoing abuses. Another agriculture service voted to boot Peroulis from its membership.

Federal investigators found violations at the ranch in 1990, 1993, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2007 and 2008. Despite these findings, the Peroulis family continued to bring H-2A workers through the visa program until 2015. They were never debarred, or banned from the program.

Members of the Peroulis family could not be reached for comment. It’s unclear why they stopped using H-2A workers.

Trouble at Bair Ranch

Several employers who continue to bring H-2A workers also have disturbing histories of abuse allegations.

The James Craig Bair Ranch in Glenwood Springs has been a staple in the region for more than a century, homesteaded by Jim Bair’s great-grandfather and continued for five generations since. The family, through the help of H-2A workers, tends to some 12,000 sheep.

Department of Labor records show only one case against the ranchers. In 2008, federal officials fined the operators $1,100 after finding 11 H-2A violations.

But details from three federal lawsuits point to a dangerous work climate for the ranch’s seasonal guest workers.

In 2012, a worker sued the ranch, alleging he was sexually assaulted by Jason Bair, who runs the family’s sheep operation. After the alleged assault, Bair told the man that he would kill him if he told anyone what had happened, the man said in the lawsuit.

The parties reached a settlement agreement that ended the litigation. Jason Bair could not be reached for comment.

In 2016, three Peruvian workers filed a federal lawsuit against the Bair family, alleging false imprisonment, fraud, extortion and a “pattern of racketeering activity.”

One of those workers who sued, Pines Vivas-Moreno, said he lost part of his index finger on his right hand while operating a lawnmower. The worker alleged Jason Bair complained to the doctor about the cost of amputation, convincing him to change his treatment recommendation.

On July 31, 2015, Vivas-Moreno was operating a tractor when it malfunctioned and began rolling down a hill. Since he couldn’t operate the vehicle properly with his injured hand, the tractor crashed into a fence, sending Vivas-Moreno to the ground.

Jim Bair, Jason’s brother, proceeded to scream and curse at Vivas for the mishap, according to the lawsuit. “In a fit of anger,” Bair attacked Vivas-Moreno, “throwing him into a barbed wire fence, at which point the worker lost consciousness,” the lawsuit alleges.

Jim Bair told police after the incident that he never put his hands on Vivas-Moreno, according to a Garfield County sheriff’s report. The worker fainted from being yelled at, he said.

Authorities made no arrests and filed no charges.

Workers said in the lawsuit the Bairs stole their wages and forced them to live and work in squalid conditions.

Laborers received food infrequently, they alleged, causing them to go hungry. The family provided dirty water in large barrels that had to be boiled before drinking or cooking, the lawsuit says. The herders “frequently worked through the day without being given food for lunch.”

The migrant laborers often feared for their physical safety. In one instance, Jim Bair screamed and threatened to hit workers with a metal tool after a sheep fell off a truck during transport, the lawsuit alleges. As punishment, one herder, Gerson Salvatierra, was not given food for the entire day.

The Bairs told workers stories about herders who had escaped and the “bad things that happened to them as a result.” Salvatierra said he was told that “herders who escape deserve to die.”

Jim Bair then allegedly said if he found one escaped herder he “would put a bullet in him,” according to the complaint.

The Bairs denied all of the workers’ allegations in the lawsuit. The workers and the ranch operators in 2017 agreed to settle the case, with the details remaining confidential.

LEFT — An open can of garbanzo beans sits among other food items on the wood-burning stove in a Peruvian sheepherder’s wagon on National Forest land north of Craig, Colorado, on Saturday, Aug. 10, 2024. RIGHT — A sock hangs out of a tattered boot at the sheepherder’s camp on National Forest land north of Craig, Colorado. (Photos by Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post)Jenifer Rodriguez, managing attorney for Colorado Legal Services’ migrant farm worker division, said the U.S. embassy in Peru told her in 2015 that it had blocked the Colorado employer for multiple years from bringing Peruvian laborers to the U.S.

But Bair Ranch was never debarred from the program. It resumed bringing H-2A workers in 2018 and has every year since.

Jim Bair, in a brief phone interview with The Post, declined to comment on the allegations contained in the lawsuits or police report.

“As an American employer, we have less rights than just about anybody,” he said. “This country has gone to hell.”

Enforcing the H-2A program

Despite these allegations of egregious worker abuses, precious few Colorado companies have been kicked out of the H-2A program.

Since 2015, 420 Colorado companies have hired workers through the federal program. The Department of Labor has booted just seven in nine years through a process known as debarment.

It’s hardly a Colorado problem.

A 2016 BuzzFeed News investigation found the department rarely bans companies from the H-2A program, even after outrageous conduct. Government audits have found the Labor Department has an “inability to consider debarment” for the most severe offenders, the news agency found. Sometimes it blocked its own employees from investigating whether companies were breaking the law.

“The short answer is it’s hard” to debar employers, said Gregory Schell, a Florida lawyer who has represented guest workers for four decades. “Procedurally it’s difficult for the department.”

Part of the lack of oversight stems from a shortage of monitors.

A 2020 study by the Economic Policy Institute found more than 70% of federal labor standards investigations of farms detect violations, ranging from wage theft to inadequate housing and other infractions.

But with one wage-and-hour investigator for every 175,000 workers, the Labor Department likely misses a wide swath of violations, the study found.

In 2023, the Labor Department conducted more than 400 H-2A investigations nationwide, resulting in $3.8 million in back wages for more than 5,000 workers, according to agency figures. The feds also issued more than $4 million in civil penalties.

In a statement, the department said investigators consider several factors when deciding whether a company should be debarred: previous history of violations; the number of workers affected; the gravity of the violation; the employer’s good faith efforts to comply; and a commitment to future compliance, among others.

In a handful of cases, the federal government has come down hard on Colorado employers.

Federal officials in 2018 debarred a Weld County family and its two sheep-shearing businesses after finding the employers didn’t provide housing for their workers (as is required by law); didn’t provide transportation to work sites; and “discriminated, intimidated and threatened” their 16-person workforce.

Federal law states employers who bring H-2A workers must pay for nearly everything: food, housing, and transportation to and from the United States as well as to work sites and into town. They must also provide any tools for agricultural work and cannot deduct wages to pay for any of it.

But labor investigators found Georgiou Shearing, based in Galeton, and its owner, Argy Georgiou, instructed workers to purchase their own RVs or sleep in the shearing trailer. As many as six employees slept in each RV, investigators said, which cost workers up to $2,000 to purchase.

At one point, four workers had nowhere to live after one of their RVs broke down. The company was aware of the issue, the Department of Labor found, instructing employees to sleep in the shearing trailer until then.

In Greeley, where workers lived for part of the year, some were offered free housing at the discretion of the employers. Others were forced to rent their own apartments or park trailers on rented lots — all out of their own pockets, investigators said. The employees in the RVs had no access to bathrooms.

Despite strict laws on transportation for H-2A workers, Georgiou Shearing made employees purchase their own cars and pay for their own gas, the Labor Department found.

On numerous occasions, the Labor Department found the employer did not pay wages when due. The agency said Georgiou owed nearly $242,000 in back wages from 2009 to 2012.

In 2013, three Peruvian workers sued the company and its operators for unpaid minimum wages and contract damages, saying they were not reimbursed for travel to and from the United States.

The following year, Georgiou filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.

As the federal investigation concluded, the company reorganized under a new name: P&M LLC, run by Georgiou’s son, Maxamiano Larralde. A subsequent federal probe found the new company treated its employees the same way: no free housing, no free transportation and “discriminating, intimidating and threatening” behavior.

In 2018, the feds debarred Larralde, Georgiou and two other family members for three years from the H-2A program. Georgiou Shearing and P&M were also temporarily banned. Family representatives did not respond to requests for comment.

All are eligible again to rehire guest workers, though they have not done so.

The other Colorado employers who have been debarred from the program include: Harold B. Blach, a now-deceased rancher from Yuma; the LOV Ranch in Rifle; and Myers Ranch, 3 Mil Iron Ranch and 20 Mile Sheep, all in Craig.

Every Colorado employer or individual to be booted from the H-2A program since 2014 has been a ranch or sheepherding/shearing business. None have been growers.

Discontinuation of services

There’s another way for states to effectively block employers from using the H-2A program. But it’s only been used twice in Colorado.

The process is called a discontinuation of services.

Here’s how it works: If the U.S. Department of Labor finds violations from an H-2A employer, the feds can give this information to the state workforce agency (in Colorado, that’s the Department of Labor and Employment).

If the state issues a discontinuation of services, the employer has 20 days to file an appeal and request a hearing. Employers cannot use the guest worker program to access new workers until they comply with the terms of any settlement agreement or corrective action.

The problem: The federal agency rarely lets states know their investigative findings, said Schell, the Florida worker attorney. The Department of Labor, meanwhile, says states are confused about the process and don’t use it when they should.

Multiple states — including New York, Arkansas and Mississippi — have been unable to discontinue services to wayward employers because the Labor Department refuses to freely share its determinations, Schell said.

The feds, in response, told states they could file Freedom of Information Act requests, he said. In the end, companies that should be disciplined continue to receive H-2A workers year after year.

“It’s so simple,” Schell said. “It boggles the mind why they won’t do it.”

The Labor Department, in recent rulemaking for proposed updated regulations, said states only discontinued services to 17 employers nationwide in 2020. Federal officials observed a “glaring disparity” between employer violations and the state barring these problematic bosses.

“The department has observed hesitancy among (states) to utilize the existing discontinuation provisions” due to “uncertainty regarding the process,” the proposed rules state.

Schell and his organization, the Migrant Farmworker Justice Project, told the department in public comments to the proposed rules that the “almost complete failure by the (state workforce agencies) to discontinue employment services to employers who were determined to have violated the law has undoubtedly contributed to the widespread abuse of H-2A workers nationwide.”

“Properly applied,” the advocates continued, “discontinuation of services would be a major deterrent to employers who might otherwise violate the law.”

Yet Colorado, like other states, has almost never used this provision — though that might be changing.

The state issued its first discontinuation of services in March 2023 to a Western Slope employer, 3X Lazy Sheep Company, for a variety of violations, including retaliatory comments when workers questioned their conditions and visa status; refusal to provide transportation to town; and denying workers free tools to do their jobs.

“This evidence demonstrates the potential for substantial harm to workers and particularly to vulnerable, foreign farm workers,” state labor officials wrote.

Company representatives did not respond to calls seeking comment.

State labor officials issued another discontinuation of services in June 2023 against Larimer County’s Korby Sod and Landscaping. The department settled with the employer, agreeing to a three-year probationary period.

State officials would not discuss their discontinuation of services work with The Post for this series, declining multiple interview requests.

Colorado does employ outreach workers who talk to these guest laborers and mediate disputes with employers. But workers wonder whose side they’re really on.

Martin Valdez Gonzales, who conducts outreach in the Delta and Montrose region, said housing and working conditions have improved over the years, and that H-2A workers are not treated any differently than other laborers.

He said he takes a collaborative approach to his work, never showing up to a farm or ranch unannounced. Ninety percent of employers are cooperative, he said, citing his trusted relationships with employers. Plus, these are his neighbors, Valdez Gonzales said, meaning he has to be more conscious of his interactions.

“There are so many rules and regulations,” he said. “It’s not easy for employers.”

Valdez Gonzales acknowledged that the sheep industry is “nastier” than other seasonal farm work and that they “don’t care about the worker as much as the business.”

As for ranchers providing food to their workers, Valdez Gonzales said it’s hard for owners to get out there in the vast range.

“Employers can’t go out there every day,” he said. “They have things to do.”

Colorado lawmakers, more than a decade ago, attempted to pass legislation to protect sheepherders.

Their efforts went nowhere.

An initial bill in 2010 would have mandated workers have access to running water, a hot shower and days off. After pushback from ranchers and agricultural groups, the sponsors watered the language down to convene a study group of the issues.

Even that failed.

There have been no efforts since, aside from a few provisions in a farmworker bill of rights law signed in 2021 by Gov. Jared Polis. The law increased herders’ pay; mandated employers give them one day every three weeks to go to town; and added language to allow service providers — such as labor attorneys or medical personnel — to speak with workers on the job.

Still, workers say not all the new changes have become commonplace.

Lee, the former Colorado Legal Services lawyer, said the changes are positive, though the program remains problematic.

“Ultimately, you can fix at the margins,” she said. “But it’s still giving someone a visa and not allowing them to choose where they work. Until you can change that, you’ll continue to see these kinds of abuses.”

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