North Carolina Needs Heat Safety Standards for Farmworkers

I am writing as your constituent to urge you to champion legislation establishing occupational heat safety standards and enhanced field sanitation requirements for North Carolina's agricultural workers. Seven states have already enacted these protections, and our state's economy can plainly afford them, as agriculture contributes over ten billion dollars annually to North Carolina's economy and represents twenty-two percent of the state's total income. Each farmworker generates over twelve thousand dollars in annual profits for our state. Yet North Carolina lacks the basic workplace heat safety standards that California, Colorado, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington have enacted into law. Federal OSHA provides only a vague general duty clause, far weaker than the proactive requirements these states mandate. The gaps are severe. We have no state-level heat safety plan requirements when temperatures exceed eighty degrees Fahrenheit, no mandatory rest and hydration protocols for outdoor work, no worker training on heat illness recognition, and no emergency response procedures for heat-related crises. Additionally, federal OSHA field sanitation requirements apply only to farms with eleven or more workers (http://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/regulations/standardnumber/1928/1928.110). According to the 2022 Census of Agriculture (https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/AgCensus/2022/Full_Report/Volume_1,_Chapter_2_US_State_Level/st99_2_007), 9,235 farms in North Carolina employ fewer than ten workers, meaning at least 24,381 farmworkers have no legal right to toilets, handwashing facilities, or clean drinking water during their workday. Farmworkers face compounding risks. Nearly five out of ten North Carolina farmworkers cannot afford enough food for their families. Heat-related illness is a genuine occupational health emergency for workers with no margin for medical emergencies. Child labor compounds this concern. North Carolina permits children as young as ten to work in agricultural fields. According to the NC Farmworkers Advocacy Network, at least nine children have died working on North Carolina farms in the past decade. See https://ncfan.org/resources/child-labor-facts/ The most common objection to farmworker protection standards is cost. This argument does not withstand scrutiny. Our state's agriculture sector generates over ten billion dollars annually in economic value. The regulatory infrastructure to enforce heat safety and sanitation standards, modeled on successful systems already operating in seven other states, is a modest investment relative to this economic output. Preventing heat illness and sanitation-related disease may actually reduces employer costs through lower absenteeism and higher productivity. I respectfully urge you to sponsor legislation establishing a North Carolina Heat Illness Prevention Standard for outdoor agricultural workers, modeled on California or Maryland's frameworks, and to extend OSHA field sanitation requirements to farms with all hired workers, eliminating the 'ten-or-less' worker exemption.