In an Inves­tiga­tive Fund sto­ry for In These Times last year , I uncov­ered how wage theft was ram­pant in New Mex­i­co’s chile fields. One of the most com­mon ways that con­tratis­tas were steal­ing wages was by rou­tine­ly pay­ing work­ers the fed­er­al min­i­mum wage, which is $7.25 an hour — but they should have been pay­ing New Mex­i­co’s wage, which is 25 cents more. While there is an exemp­tion for small farms, the exemp­tion some­how became stan­dard prac­tice on vir­tu­al­ly all farms across the state.

It has tak­en almost a year of emails, let­ters and pres­sure, but at least some of New Mex­i­co’s con­tratis­tas (farm labor con­trac­tors) are final­ly pay­ing farm­work­ers the min­i­mum wage they’re enti­tled to. Until this year, they’d been pay­ing the fed­er­al min­i­mum wage, which is low­er than the state’s. The dif­fer­ence is small, only about an extra $10 a week, but for work­ers who are among the low­est paid in the US, every cent is cru­cial. The dif­fer­ence for con­tratis­tas, how­ev­er, is enor­mous; even those with small crews have saved hun­dreds of dol­lars a week by under­pay­ing work­ers and many thou­sands since New Mex­i­co’s min­i­mum wage was increased on Jan­u­ary 1, 2009.

Last year, María Martínez Sánchez, an Albu­querque attor­ney who has worked tire­less­ly for farm­work­er rights for years, informed New Mex­i­co’s Depart­ment of Work­force Solu­tions (DWS) about this dis­crep­an­cy. In response, Jason Dean, the Divi­sion Direc­tor of the Labor Rela­tions Divi­sion, sent an email to DWS employ­ees on Octo­ber 4. ​“It has come to my atten­tion that our agency is not apply­ing the NM ​‘Min­i­mum Wage Act’ … cor­rect­ly as it relates to our Migrant Farm Work­ers,” he wrote. ​“This com­mu­ni­ca­tion is intend­ed to cor­rect that error imme­di­ate­ly. … As an agency we should not uni­lat­er­al­ly be telling all farm work­ers they are only enti­tled to the fed­er­al min­i­mum wage. ” But even though Dean said he want­ed the error cor­rect­ed ​“imme­di­ate­ly,” that did­n’t happen.

Dean fol­lowed-up his email with a let­ter to New Mex­i­co’s reg­is­tered con­tratis­tas in late Feb­ru­ary of this year inform­ing them that ​“the major­i­ty of farm­work­er employ­ees … should be paid an aver­age of at least $7.50 an hour.” That did­n’t do much, either. In April I found that, except on one farm, work­ers were still get­ting paid $7.25 an hour, for hourly wage work like weeding.

Dur­ing my inves­ti­ga­tion last year, I spoke briefly with Dino Cer­vantes, the pres­i­dent of the New Mex­i­co Chile Asso­ci­a­tion (NMCA, an indus­try group) and told him that work­ers weren’t being paid the cor­rect wage. ​“If they’re get­ting paid $7.25 an hour, (con­tratis­tas) are assum­ing that’s right,” he said. ​“They’re not try­ing to exploit work­ers. Prob­a­bly just a phone call will solve the problem.”

Hard­ly. The email and let­ter from Dean proved inef­fec­tive, and it was only after a DWS inves­ti­ga­tion, in late June of this year, of a con­tratista who rou­tine­ly under­paid work­ers — an inves­ti­ga­tion insti­gat­ed by Tess Wilkes, anoth­er attor­ney who has worked dili­gent­ly for farm­work­er rights — that he, and oth­er con­tratis­tas, began pay­ing work­ers the legal min­i­mum wage.

Most farm­work­ers appre­ci­ate the few extra dol­lars in their pock­ets. ​“It’s a lit­tle more mon­ey for the fam­i­ly,” said Raúl Car­dona, a work­er from Zacate­cas. ​“I can buy a lit­tle more food, tor­tillas, maybe some fruit for my chil­dren.” Gre­go­rio Car­reto, a 72-year-old work­er from Mex­i­co City, said he would buy some school sup­plies for his grandchildren.

Not all work­ers were hap­py with the increase, how­ev­er. ​“You real­ly can’t do any­thing with it,” said Eddie (he only want­ed his first name used), a work­er from Ciu­dad Juarez. ​“I can’t even buy gum for my kids. Bur­ri­tos are $1 and you eat six a day, plus sodas. What we need is a dol­lar more.”

It’s extreme­ly unlike­ly that work­ers will get that dol­lar more per hour. But it turns out, they’re actu­al­ly enti­tled to a lot more money.

Dur­ing har­vest sea­son, chileros (chile pick­ers) begin lin­ing the streets of El Paso as ear­ly as 1:00 a.m., hop­ing to be hired for the day. Some con­tratis­tas pro­vide bus­es or vans that take work­ers to the fields in New Mex­i­co, a two- or three-hour ride away. There they’ll wait an hour or more until it’s light enough to begin work. Accord­ing to fed­er­al law, work­ers should be paid from the moment they arrive in the fields — some­thing Dean even stat­ed in his email to DWS employ­ees and in the let­ter to con­tratis­tas.

I asked many work­ers about unpaid wait time, includ­ing 53-year-old Jorge Matien, who, like most farm­work­ers in El Paso, is orig­i­nal­ly from Ciu­dad Juarez. ​“Some­times we get [to the fields] about 5 but we need to wait so we can see,” he said. ​“So we wait one hour, a cou­ple hours.” And the pay? ​“Noth­ing. We don’t get noth­ing until we start to work.”

Last year, I asked Jaye Hawkins, the Direc­tor of the NMCA, why work­ers were tak­en to the fields so ear­ly if they could­n’t start pick­ing because it was dark. In an email, she wrote, ​“Most­ly the work­ers want to take advan­tage of the cool times of the day … most of this is to accom­mo­date work­ers … [and it’s] cul­tur­al. Ear­ly morn­ings and [agri­cul­ture] kind of have always gone hand in hand. What good would it do for a [f]armer to want employ­ees to arrive before they are sched­uled or before [there is] har­vest equip­ment and super­vi­sion at the field?”

I’ve learned from my report­ing trips, though, that farm­ers do have har­vest equip­ment and super­vi­sion in the fields — but work­ers still can’t pick until it’s light enough to see.

Get­ting paid for that wait time would be huge for work­ers. Not only do they typ­i­cal­ly wait an hour or more in the morn­ing, they also wait again to be paid at the end of the day. That’s at least $15 a day or $90 a week more for hourly work­ers who typ­i­cal­ly gross between $300 and $360 a week. Joy Fore­hand, DWS’s deputy cab­i­net sec­re­tary, did­n’t respond to emailed ques­tions about whether the agency will enforce the law. She did note, how­ev­er, that DWS had final­ly fin­ished an Eng­lish ver­sion of the state min­i­mum wage poster, which lists that most work­ers are to be paid $7.50 an hour. Until recent­ly, the DWS web­site only had the fed­er­al poster, show­ing the low­er hourly wage. A Span­ish ver­sion, she said, is in the works.

With so many con­tratis­tas in New Mex­i­co, there’s no guar­an­tee they’ll all pay the cor­rect wage, and it’s extreme­ly unlike­ly any are pay­ing for wait time. Get­ting con­tratis­tas to obey all of the wage laws will take enforce­ment by DWS, along with fines for non-com­pli­ance, vig­i­lance by advo­cates and, espe­cial­ly, demands from work­ers them­selves for their wages and rights.

Reprint­ed with per­mis­sion from The Inves­tiga­tive Fund.