Bob Wick/Bureau of Land Management/Flickr
The peak season for commercial rafting in Colorado normally occupies an intense 90-day window that starts in late spring.
But in 2022, January might prove to be an equally vital period for the industry. That’s when opponents of a new federal minimum wage mandate will ask a federal judge to bar the increase.
The Colorado River Outfitters Association and Arkansas Valley Adventures, represented by the Sacramento, Calif.-based Pacific Legal Foundation, are seeking to halt President Biden’s mandated wage hike for federal contractors — including businesses like recreational services that operate on public lands and waters.
"Outfitters and guides on federal lands are not federal contractors," Caleb Kruckenberg, a PLF attorney, wrote in the complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado.
He continued: "Yet President Biden, acting through the U.S. Department of Labor, has now ordered them to be lumped in with federal contractors, and adopt a wage model that is fundamentally incompatible with the way that the guiding industry operates."
Under an executive order Biden inked in April, the minimum wage for federal contractors will rise on Jan. 30 to $15 per hour, with $22.50 required per overtime hour.
That includes recreational services — outfits offering rafting, hunting and fishing guides, as well as horseback riding and ski instruction — after Biden’s order quietly jettisoned a 2-year-old exemption for those...
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