Rocky Mount, NC – As part of the Not One More Death campaign, El Futuro es Nuestro (The Future is Ours) and the North Carolina Environmental Justice Network (NCEJN), the North Carolina Farmworker Advocacy Network (FAN), and the Union of Southern Service Workers have organized an event to bring together North Carolina workers. Together, we honor those who have died due to heat and other factors on the job, and strategize on how to be stronger. Workers from different sectors will speak about their demands and their struggles to protect the lives of all workers and eliminate the risk of death. After the strategy session, workers and their supporters will go to the Martin Luther King Jr. Park (800 E Virginia St, Rocky Mount, NC 27801) for a vigil, honoring those who have died from heat stress and poor working conditions, and raising the call for awareness.
Join us at the vigil: 3.45 pm, MLK Park, Rocky Mount
Even after the death of thirty-year-old José Arturo González Mendoza at Barnes Farming Company in Nash County last year, little has changed. Even though over 300 workers signed a petition asking the NC Growers Association for breaks, access to clean cold water and medical attention, air conditioning in housing, no retaliation when workers need to leave the field or go to shade, and an emergency plan for heat response, there has been no sufficient response.
“We must continue to spread this information so that these workers know that they are not alone and they feel empowered, and protected, to speak up,” said Leticia Zavala, co-director of El Futuro es Nuestro.
Just last month another NCGA grower was fined for not having water in the fields. Workers continue to be threatened for missing a day’s work when they feel sick. Some workers have limited refrigerator access, and there are still times when workers have no breaks or drinking water. At the same time many do not have air conditioning units in their housing, making it more difficult for their bodies to cool down.
The Department of Labor is creating the first-ever federal safety standard for extreme heat in the workplace. Farmworkers are laboring under deadly heat with no shade, few breaks, and little water. They need strong, enforced heat protections to save their lives.
“This year, two workers in NC died from heat stress: Juan Jose Ceballos, a 32-year-old farmworker who died in Nash County in July, and Wednesday “Wendy” Johnson, a 51-year-old US Postal Service worker who died in Moore County in June. Given climate change, the summers will only get warmer, which means more workers will be at risk. And, yet,” said Rania Masri, co-director of the NC Environmental Justice Network, “workers still have to fight for free clean drinking water, for paid rest breaks in the shade, and even for a period of acclimatization for the heat. Nationwide, 70% of all heat-related deaths occur within the first work week.”
For more information watch The Invisible Crisis Killing America’s Workers.
Contact:
Leticia Zavala | itsourfuture2021@gmail.com
Co-Director, El Futuro es Nuestro
Rania Masri | rania@ncejn.org
Co-Director, NC Environmental Justice Network
