Farmworkers are making — and enforcing — the strongest heat protection rules in the country
Farmworkers are making — and enforcing — the strongest heat protection rules in the country
Last year was the hottest year on record, and forecasters are already predicting that 2024 may top it. And for those who work outside, that heat can be deadly. In spite of that, there aren’t any federal workplace rules concerning heat safety for workers.
A coalition of farmworkers in Florida took matters into their own hands and created the Fair Food Program, ensuring workers on participating farms have mandatory rest periods, along with access to water, shade, and restrooms. In return, farms that comply are first in line to sell to big buyers like Walmart and Trader Joe’s.
Nicolás Rivero is a climate solutions reporter at The Washington Post. He joined “Marketplace” host Amy Scott to talk about the origins of the Fair Food Program and the progress it’s made. A transcript of their conversation is below.
Amy Scott: Tell me about the coalition that pushed for these protections for workers and how they pulled it off.
Nicolás Rivero: Yeah, so this all got started with a group of workers in Immokalee, Florida, which is a small, primarily tomato-farming town in southwest Florida. They formed a group called the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in 1993. And originally it was to fight for even more basic protections, so fighting against things like forced labor, violent bosses, wage theft, sexual harassment, those kinds of things. And they started out just protesting against farms that, you know, were violating some of these basic kinds of rights. And then in the early 2000s, they changed tactics. So rather than targeting their protests at farms, they started targeting them at the companies that bought produce from those farms. So they had a kind of 10-year campaign of protests that eventually led to the creation of the Fair Food Program in 2011.
Scott: And they targeted some pretty big companies: McDonald’s, Taco Bell. Why do you think that strategy was so effective?
Rivero: Well, these buyers have a lot of market power. I guess, think about it this way. If you are OSHA, if you’re a federal regulator, what you can do is basically try to investigate different workplaces around the country. And if you find a violation, then you can issue a fine. So for instance, last year in Fort Lauderdale, there was a farm worker who died of a heat stroke, and that farm was issued a fine of around $15,000. That fine may or may not change practices on the farm.
Scott: Yeah, that’s pretty small.
Rivero: It’s pretty small. But with a market-based kind of approach, you have a much bigger incentive, which is if you get blacklisted from selling to Walmart, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Burger King, McDonald’s, all these other kind of fast food companies, it might have a much bigger impact on your bottom line and be a larger incentive to do the right thing.
Scott: How are these rules enforced?
Rivero: So the Fair Food Program sends out an auditor to every farm every year. And while they’re there, those auditors speak to a majority of the workers. So it’s a pretty high level of oversight. I mean, you really don’t see every workplace being inspected every year outside of programs like this.
Scott: In your story, you quote one of the organizers telling workers, “You don’t have to risk your life while you’re feeding the country.” But that’s what’s happening, right? I mean, you report that farm workers are 35 times more likely to die of heat-related illnesses than other workers. Why do you think it’s been so hard to get regulatory protections for these workers?
Rivero: Well, for a few reasons. I mean, one, there’s been some industry pushback. Two, it’s tougher for farm workers to organize and collectively bargain. But I also think it’s a little bit out of sight, out of mind for people. We have protections from heat for people like high school athletes, or soldiers, not so much for farm workers, who in many cases might be older, or have other kinds of pre-existing conditions like diabetes, kidney issues that also complicate being out in the heat, and are in some ways more vulnerable.
Scott: How can consumers, or can we, know if we’re buying products from companies that treat workers well and let them take a break, say, in 90-degree heat?
Rivero: Well, one thing you can look out for is a sticker that goes on produce picked by Fair Food Program farms, at least in some grocery stores. It’s a picture of a worker holding a bucket over their shoulder. And so, if you see that, you know that your produce is coming from a farm where workers have some kind of basic workplace protections.
Scott: You talk about an example of a county that considered stronger regulations to protect workers: Miami-Dade in Florida. But commissioners worried it could kill the industry. I’m curious, though, is this costing companies any more to offer these protections for workers or to mandate these protections?
Rivero: Yes, so the farm owners that I spoke to said that yes, there’s some costs associated with it. They recoup some of that cost by having workers who are more productive and less likely to miss work because they had heatstroke the day before. And they also say it’s the right thing to do and, whatever level of cost it comes with, it’s kind of their obligation as employers to bear it and make sure that they’re providing a safe place for people to work.
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