US workers facing deadly heat borrow from tomato pickers to win key protections
Source: The Guardian ·
As efforts to protect people from extreme heat stall, organizers are embracing an approach that targets major brands’ reputations“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…
From the source
“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…
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