40-hour workweek in fruit packing houses: schedule, overtime and what it costs to stay at 48

Saturday, two in the afternoon, fruit on the floor and the crew reaching its 48 hours. Today that whole week is regular time. With the 40-hour workweek in fruit packing houses, in 2030 the last eight go out at double pay and land in an electronic record with clock-in and clock-out times.

The decree of May 1, 2026 in the DOF, Mexico’s official federal gazette, amends the LFT, Mexico’s Federal Labor Law (Ley Federal del Trabajo), and is already in force. Here you get the schedule, what staying the same costs and what to review before January. This text is not legal advice: a labor lawyer has to validate your case, your collective contract and the way you pay.

If you are also looking at a machine to take lifting hours out of the week, start with how to get started with a first robot.

40-hour workweek in fruit packing houses: the schedule

These come from the second and fourth transitory articles and from article 68; the last column is a sum by Agro Robotics. Double pay means 100% more on top of the regular hour, and triple means 200% more. The third transitory article gives from May 1 to December 31, 2026 to adjust processes, and the seventh prohibits lowering pay, wages or benefits because of this reduction.

The double-pay hours are spread over up to 4 per day and at most 4 days a week (article 66). Regular plus overtime never exceeds 12 hours a day (article 68). A 12-hour roster, six days in a row, adds up to 72 and is already outside the table today. The maximum week barely drops, and the hit comes in the pay: every year more hours go out at double.

Which shift does the reduction hit first?

Article 61 leaves the daily workday unchanged: 8 hours for the day shift, 7 for the night shift and 7.5 for the mixed shift. Multiplied by six days, each shift reaches the cap in a different year.

This is Agro Robotics’ reading of articles 59, 61 and 69 for a six-day roster; article 58 lets the hours be distributed by mutual agreement, and with a different roster the dates change.

Watch the second shift. The one that starts at 2 in the afternoon and ends at 10 at night includes two night hours, and that makes it mixed (article 60). Its regular workday is seven and a half hours, so the last half hour already goes out as overtime.

What does it cost to keep running 48 hours?

Agro Robotics calculation at constant wages, with these assumptions in plain view: a week of 6 days worked and 7 paid; the value of the hour equal to the daily wage × 6 ÷ the weekly hours; all hours beyond the workweek at double pay; leaving out IMSS (social security), Infonavit (the housing fund), payroll tax and absenteeism.

The last column uses 315.04 pesos a day, the 2026 general minimum wage outside the northern border zone. With a crew of 20 people as an example, in 2030 that is 15,122 pesos more per week. If your lawyer values the hour as the weekly wage divided by the workweek, payroll rises +8.7% in 2027 and +40% in 2030. The 2027 minimum wage gets published in December and stays out of this count.

There is another way to cover those hours. With more people on a full workweek, each line hour goes up by the same amount as the regular hour: +4.3% in 2027 and +20% in 2030, with the same assumptions and before counting hiring and training. Covering with more people costs less in payroll than paying overtime, as long as you can find them. In season, finding them is a separate problem, and it is covered in labor shortage in fruit packing houses.

What does the electronic record of hours require?

Article 132, section XXXIV, requires you to record each person’s working hours electronically, with start and end times, and to hand the record to the authority when it asks. The STPS, Mexico’s labor ministry, has to issue general provisions on who it applies to and with what exceptions, and those provisions take effect on January 1, 2027 (fifth transitory article). As of November 4, 2026 we had not located them in the DOF, so nobody can yet tell you with certainty what happens with temporary workers or with small packing houses.

The crew leader’s notebook stops being enough. The record counts as full proof if it is shown that the parties agreed to it, and that phrase deserves a signed document. Failing to comply costs from 250 to 5,000 UMA, Mexico’s reference unit for fines (article 994, section IV Bis): from 29,327.50 to 586,550 pesos with the 2026 UMA of 117.31 pesos, Agro Robotics calculation. Every overtime hour will be in plain view, and so will any difference against the payroll.

What options does a packing house have for 2027?

Agro Robotics calculation with the same assumptions. At the hopper job, overtime also collides with another standard: NOM-036 in fruit packing houses, Mexico’s manual handling standard, sets 10,000 kg of accumulated mass per 8-hour workday and gives no figure for longer shifts.

If you lean toward mechanizing, the fruit crate tipper takes the lifting out of the hopper job, and the plan for the people is in automating a fruit packing house without layoffs. Test your hours in the payback calculator, because a line at one shift and a line at two give very different answers. The big jump comes in 2029 and 2030, and it pays to have the decision made before then.

What to review with your lawyer before January 2027

• The word “extraordinary”. Article 66 allows extending the workday for extraordinary circumstances (circunstancias extraordinarias). If your season calls for overtime every week for months, ask whether your arrangement holds up under that word.
• How the hour is valued. That decides whether 2030 is +34% or +40%.
• Who gets paid by the box. If you pay piece rate, the table above does not apply as is.
• Temporary workers and season. Article 39-F allows a discontinuous employment relationship for seasonal activities, with the same rights in proportion to the time worked.
• Who counts as a farm worker. Article 279 leaves out those who work at companies that acquire rural products in order to pack them, and that can change which minimum wage applies: 356.16 pesos for a farm day laborer or 315.04 general in 2026, according to the resolution of Conasami, Mexico’s minimum wage commission.

The first step lands on January 1, 2027: 46 hours, 9 overtime hours at double pay and the electronic record rules in force.