‘They’re literally hot all the time.’ How a heat standard would help NC farmworkers
For a proposed federal heat standard to be effective in North Carolina, it would need to consider worker housing and be based in part on humidity levels, according to advocates, experts and workers interviewed by The News & Observer.
Last week, the Biden administration announced that it is launching several initiatives to help protect workers from high temperatures, including moving toward a federal heat standard and increasing enforcement on days where the temperature is higher than 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Most states, including North Carolina, lack standards specifically protecting workers from high temperatures.
For the past 11 summers, Chano Isiordia has worked in Harnett and Sampson fields, spending 10 hours a day under the sun picking tobacco and sweet potatoes.
“It would be nice,” said Isiordia in Spanish, when asked in a video interview if he would like a national heat standard. The rules would be especially useful during scorching summers like 2020’s, he said.
It is important that any standard include a clause requiring cooling in employer-provided housing so that migrant workers returning home after a day under the hot sun have a chance to recover, said those interviewed by The News & Observer. They also discussed the importance of enforcing the potential standards.
The federal announcement cited the climate crisis as a key reason for its actions. Last year, the N.C. Climate Science Report found it “very likely” that heat index values will increase in coming summers as climate change causes humidity levels to rise.
This summer, more than 3,000 people in North Carolina reported to the emergency room suffering from heat illness, according to weekly reports from the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services. It is common for people suffering from heat illness to identify as male and also to have been working outdoors when the condition set in.
Margarita Vasquez Martinez, who works with farmworkers as a health and justice organizer with Toxic Free NC and the Episcopal Farmworker Ministry, said, “They’re not able to rest and not able to cool their bodies. So now they’re already going to work dehydrated or already not able to get that rest and cool body that you and I would be able to. ... They’re literally hot the whole time.”
Isiordia, the farmworker, said he and his coworkers sleep in tight quarters in small dorms within a two-floor housing compound provided by the grower they work for. The air conditioning units in their rooms were provided a few years ago by a nonprofit, not by their boss, Isiordia said.
Thomas Arcury and Sara Quandt study farmworker working conditions out of the Wake Forest School of Medicine. Their research has looked at how often farmworkers are in fields during high temperatures and at farmworker housing.
It is important, Quandt said, that worker housing have air conditioning available to help cool workers throughout the entire facility instead of window units or fans that can cool the immediate area but leave temperatures high elsewhere in the building.
“Those tend to be room-specific or a window unit, not equipped to really cool a large amount of space,” Quandt said. “Those helped, but they didn’t solve the problem.”
NC’s heat protection efforts
Vasquez Martinez started working in North Carolina’s fields when she was 10 years old and returned every summer until she graduated from high school in 2010. It is crucial, she said, that any federal heat standard include strong enforcement mechanisms.
In some instances, North Carolina employers can be cited for violating the state’s general duty clause if a worker suffers a heat injury. That clause says employers need to offer a workplace free of hazards likely to cause death or serious injury.
Jennifer Haigwood, a spokeswoman for the N.C. Department of Labor, said the department has cited several employers for violating that clause in recent years but did not provide specifics about those situations. The department’s Occupational Safety and Health Division offers training for employers and employees on heat stress, Haigwood added.
While state labor officials are aware of the Biden administration’s heat standard announcement, Haigwood said they expect a lengthy rulemaking process. “If/when federal OSHA publishes a proposed rule, Commissioner (Josh) Dobson and our Occupational Safety and Health Division will review the proposed standards to determine how, and to what degree, they may apply to North Carolina,” Haigwood wrote in an email.
Vasquez Martinez agreed that the federal rulemaking process could be slow, but said it’s important that safety standards be enacted as quickly as possible. She also said it’s important that the standard take humidity levels into account, especially for North Carolina’s workers.
“The federal heat stress standard is a great first step forward, that the Biden administration is actually considering this,” Vasquez Martinez said. “How long that will take is one of the things that I kind of question, and is it going to be able to help us at all in North Carolina.”
Workers want more breaks
Isiordia said the only heat protection he and other workers have are the long-sleeved shirts and bandanas they wear. Most of the large trees around the field trap heat under them, he added.
Working in the fields often involves standing up or kneeling over in the heat, but Isiordia said his fellow workers have to lift heavy buckets of sweet potatoes or bales of tobacco leaves.
“Some laws would be good to help us by giving us access to cold water and to allow us to have more breaks, at least a few minutes under the shade,” Isiordia said.
While Isiorida is acclimated to the high temperatures, he said the hottest days have caused heat exhaustion and nausea among other workers. That threat is worsened by the potential of illness from contact with the nicotine on tobacco leaves, also known as green tobacco sickness.
Workers are permitted breaks for breakfast and lunch, Isiordia said, but stopping at other times is frowned upon.
“If you just so much as sit down in some shade for a few minutes, the foreman comes and scolds you, they get mad because you stop working,” he said.
Any federal standard would need to be nimble, Quandt said, able to kick in as temperatures change over the course of a day or as forecasts shift.
“You don’t always know what day is going to be heat above that level. And because agriculture work has workers spread across large fields there has to be a way to get them what they need, whether that is shade or water, where they’re not a half mile away,” Quandt said.
It is also important, Arcury said, that employers be required to conduct routine headcounts once temperatures reach certain levels.
“Most people who die of heat stress die alone,” Arcury said. “They sit down because they’re feeling bad and the other workers go on without them because they don’t know they’re missing.”
This story was produced with financial support from 1Earth Fund, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners, as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The N&O maintains full editorial control of the work.
This story was originally published September 29, 2021 at 3:59 PM.