USA: Lack of govt. heat protections for migrant farmworkers contrasts with regulations in place to protect other groups, incl. student athletes
Résumé
Date indiquée: 13 Mar 2024
Lieu: États-Unis d'Amérique
Entreprises
Utopia Farms II - EmployerConcerné
Nombre total de personnes concernées: 1
Travailleurs migrants et immigrés: ( 1 - Haïti , Agriculture et élevage , Men , Undocumented migrants )Enjeux
Morts , Occupational Health & Safety , Denial of leave , Heat exposureRéponse
Response sought: Non
Mesures prises: Administrators at Utopia Farms II notified the Occupational Health and Safety Administration about Excellent’s death, and the agency opened an investigation. Over several weeks following his death in 2019, federal investigators interviewed co-workers and managers and inspected the fields where he worked. The investigators reprimanded the company for allowing workers to perform such high-intensity work in extreme temperatures without shade or rest during the hottest period of the day. Utopia Farms II had provided fact sheets about the symptoms of heat illness to their workers in Spanish, English and Creole, but investigators found that they had no plan to gradually introduce new hires to the extreme temperatures. Clovis Excellent had been sent into the fields to work a full shift the same day he was hired and died five days into the job. To redress Excellent’s death, the Occupational Health and Safety Administration requested in a citation letter that Utopia Farms II implement a new safety plan to prevent further heat injuries, plus send their agency a check or cash payment of $13,260. After Utopia challenged the fine, it was lowered to $7,956.
Type de source: News outlet
“Florida protects student-athletes from heat. It hasn’t done the same for workers”
…Two years after Martin’s death in Fort Myers, a Haitian farmworker in his 40s named Clovis Excellent died from heatstroke at a farm just north in Bradenton. He had been working for five hours, pulling stakes from tomato beds in temperatures exceeding 90 degrees Fahrenheit.
The Occupational Health and Safety Administration investigated his death and found that, given the intensity of the work, the temperatures he was exposed to were unsafe without regular breaks in the shade. But Utopia Farms II did not require its workers to take breaks, no matter the heat…
Florida is the hottest state in the country and has some of the highest rates of hospitalization due to heat illness, which kills more than 1,200 Americans a year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention…
…His death was never reported by the local papers. Neither were the other heat-related deaths of farmworkers in the two years between Martin’s and Excellent’s deaths…
…The investigators reprimanded the company for allowing workers to perform such high-intensity work in extreme temperatures without shade or rest during the hottest period of the day…