As efforts to protect workers from extreme heat stall at the federal, state and local levels, labor organizers are increasingly borrowing a strategy developed by tomato pickers in Florida: targeting the reputations of major brands to win protections. The approach, pioneered by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), is now being adopted by groups in the US and abroad.
“It’s the kind of heat that makes you feel like you’re being dehydrated, like your skin is drying out,” said Lucas Benitez, who co-founded CIW, after harvesting watermelons with his family 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, yet most workers in fields, greenhouses and unconditioned indoor facilities still lack heat protections on the job.
Market-based enforcement model
Benitez began working in tomato fields in Immokalee, Florida, at age 16 and helped found CIW in the early 1990s. Today, CIW’s fair food program includes some of the strongest heat protections for workers in the country. The program’s protections were won through years of boycotts, hunger strikes and protests against food corporations. The model, described as “market-based enforcement” by academics, targets the reputation of known brand-name companies to improve conditions rather than focusing on smaller supply-chain entities.
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 enforcement tool without relying on government regulators.
Adoption across industries and regions
Miami-based WeCount is among the labor groups 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. Workers growing these plants were exposed to temperatures over 100F (37.8C) this summer and reported heat-related symptoms and dehydration, said Oscar Londoño, co-executive director of WeCount. “Workers feel like they’re on the verge of fainting,” Londoño said. “We have, unfortunately, far too many stories of heatstroke.”
Extreme heat endangered other workers this summer. In September, 24-year-old Obed Azahel Hernandez Perez died from extreme heat exposure while harvesting sweet potatoes in Chickasaw county, Mississippi. 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 increasing cases of kidney disease among outdoor workers, which research suggests could be linked to prolonged heat exposure.
State and federal obstacles
For years, WeCount advocated for heat protections at the state level. Despite being largely symbolic, the legislation died in committee every year, Londoño said. In 2021, the organization and labor partners launched the “que calor” campaign. Two years later, WeCount set its sights on a local ordinance. The 19-page county bill included provisions for paid rest breaks, clean drinking water, and first aid procedures when the heat index hit 90F (32.2C). In 2023, a five-member committee of Miami-Dade county commissioners voted 4-1 in favor, and the full county commission passed the bill unanimously through first reading.
But before the final vote, the Florida state legislature blocked the ordinance with a pre-emptive law banning local heat protection requirements for outdoor workers. “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 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 Indiana representative Mark Messmer would block Osha from implementing the heat protections.
Without federal heat standards, many 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 face heat from lack of ventilation, hot steam, meat carcasses, salt tanks, steriliser tanks, and ovens. In warehouses and grocery store receiving areas, some work in hot, stuffy conditions with inadequate 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.”
A long fight for better conditions
With today’s extreme heat, CIW decided it was necessary for tens of thousands of people in their program to have access to electrolytes on participating farms year-round. This summer, the fair food program added this requirement to its heat protection standards in a matter of weeks, joining existing requirements for shade, cool drinking water, paid rest breaks, heat illness training, and the ability to seek medical attention without fear of retaliation.
To reach this point, with 14 major participating food retailers including Walmart, McDonald’s, Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, workers pressured retailers through protests and hunger strikes. Benitez was among a group who held a hunger strike outside Taco Bell’s headquarters in Irvine, California, in 2003, seeking an agreement to only buy tomatoes from farms paying pickers a living wage. “Taco Bell has a policy that it will not buy food from contractors that mistreat animals,” Benitez told the Guardian during the strike. “All we are asking is that they have the same policy for humans.”
Student-led organizations also boycotted Taco Bell, getting some universities to cut ties with the franchise. After three years of boycotts, Taco Bell agreed to the coalition’s demands in 2005. Later, McDonald’s agreed to pay more for tomatoes to increase pickers’ wages in 2007.
WeCount is now in this phase with its planting justice program, targeting Costa Farms, one of the world’s largest indoor plant growers. The day after Labor Day, WeCount coordinated actions at Costa locations in Florida, South Carolina, and Virginia. Costa Farms told the Guardian that it has received requests to join the program. “We take the underlying issues seriously, but the WeCount program’s core workplace protections are already part of Costa Farms’ existing systems and practices, including paid heat-prevention training, a comprehensive heat illness prevention plan, audited payroll and employee-controlled timekeeping systems, complaint-resolution processes and onsite medical support,” the company said in a written statement. “For more than six decades, Costa Farms has invested in the safety, training and development of our team members, and that commitment continues to shape how we care for and support our workforce today.”
“We believe if Costa Farms becomes part of a new gold standard it will set a precedent for others to do the same while signaling to the major retailers that growers are ready to adopt this program,” Londoño said. “If we can transform Florida we can transform the entire industry.”
