US workers facing deadly heat embrace tactic that targets major brands’ reputations

Program founded by tomato growers has some of the strongest US worker protections – and its approach is being emulated by other groups

“It’s the kind of heat that makes you feel like you’re being dehydrated, like your skin is drying out,” said Lucas Benitez, after harvesting watermelons with his sons and wife this summer. “The heat that we had 30 years ago is not nearly the heat that we have today.”

This summer was the hottest on record in the US, and most workers in fields, greenhouses and unconditioned indoor facilities still do not have heat protections on the job, putting their health at risk as the climate crisis is expected to make extreme heat more frequent and intense.

Benitez began working in tomato fields in Immokalee, Florida, when he was just 16, and in the early 1990s went on to help found the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), named after the major tomato growing region in south-west Florida. Today, CIW’s Fair Food Program has some of the strongest heat protections for workers in the country, and its approach is being emulated by other groups – in the US and beyond – as federal, state and local efforts to protect people from extreme heat stall.

The program’s protections were hard won after years of boycotts, hunger strikes and protests against food corporations, and now protect farm workers in dozens of crop types. The model, described as “market-based enforcement” by academics, works by targeting the reputation of the known brand-name of a company – say a fast-food retailer – to improve conditions rather than smaller entities in the supply chain.

Retailers agree to pay a small premium to buy from farms that comply with a worker-protection code of conduct. Farms that violate the code can lose their preferred status, giving workers a powerful way to enforce protections without relying on government regulators.

Miami-based WeCount is among the labor groups that are now adopting the Fair Food Program model for other hot, low-wage jobs. Worker organizations in dairy production in Vermont, construction in Minnesota, sugarcane production in India, and banana production in Ecuador have created similar human rights initiatives.

Florida produces about 70% of all indoor plants sold in the US. The workers who grow these plants were exposed to temperatures over 100F (37.8C) this summer and reported heat-related symptoms and dehydration, said Oscar Londoño, the co-executive director of WeCount, a human rights organization led by immigrant workers and families in south Florida.

“Workers feel like they’re on the verge of fainting,” Londoño said. “We have, unfortunately, far too many stories of heatstroke.”

Extreme heat put other workers in danger this summer too. In September, 24-year-old Obed Azahel Hernandez Perez died from extreme heat exposure while harvesting sweet potatoes in Chickasaw county, Mississippi. And, last year, 47-year-old Marco Antonio Hernandez Guevera died after collapsing from the heat on his first day in the field at a tomato farm in Immokalee.

In Texas, hospitals are seeing an increasing number of cases of kidney disease among outdoor workers, which research suggests could be linked to prolonged exposure to extreme heat.

For years, WeCount advocated for heat protections for workers at the state level. Despite largely being symbolic (it did not include enforcement or penalty measures), the legislation died in committee every year, Londoño said. In 2021, the organization, along with labor partners across the state, launched the “qué calor” campaign, meaning “how hot”, with the goal of securing heat protections for workers. Two years later, WeCount set its sights on passing a local ordinance.

Unlike the drafted state legislation, the county bill had strong enforcement in the form of monetary penalties to make sure there was industry-wide compliance, Londoño said. The 19-page local ordinance included provisions when the heat index hit 90F (32.2C) for paid rest breaks, access to clean drinking water, and first aid procedures. In 2023, a five-member committee of Miami-Dade county commissioners voted 4-1 in favor of the ordinance and the full county commission passed the bill unanimously through first reading.

But before the county commission’s final vote on the bill, the Florida state legislature blocked the local worker heat protection ordinance with a pre-emptive law banning local efforts to require heat protections for outdoor workers throughout the state. “It was devastating to see the legislature pre-empt commonsense protections,” Londoño said. “We believe every worker deserves these protections.”

WeCount has also advocated for federal heat protections for workers through proposed Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha) standards written under the Biden administration. “Unfortunately, it looks like that heat standard is stalled. Workers can’t depend on that,” Londoño said. Proposed legislation introduced last November by the Indiana representative Mark Messmer would block Osha from implementing the heat protections.

Without federal heat standards, many people remain unprotected, said Roy McAllister, director of occupational safety and health at the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW), which represents 1.2 million workers. Few slaughterhouses at meatpacking and poultry plants are air-conditioned, and workers are exposed to heat from lack of ventilation, hot steam, meat carcasses, salt tanks, steriliser tanks and ovens, he said. In warehouses and in grocery store receiving areas, some people work their shifts in areas that are hot, stuffy and lack adequate air circulation.

“As we just saw, this is the hottest summer on record that we’ve ever had.” McAllister said. “It continues to get hotter every year. We’re starting to see more and more people exposed to high temperatures and there’s no federal protective measures to keep employers accountable.”

With today’s extreme heat, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers an…