Fair Food Program sets new, enforceable standards to protect farmworkers from heat stress in a warming world...

New FFP standards require mandatory breaks, comprehensive training, and emergency response protocols on participating farms as summer season temperatures once again reach new all-time highs across the country.

Overheated, Underprotected: Climate Change Is Killing U.S. Farmworkers (Bloomberg, 8/12/21)
Biden administration, workers grapple with health threats posed by climate change and heat (Washington Post, 7/19/21)
Unsafe Workdays for Farmworkers Could Double by 2150 (Modern Farmer, 5/6/20)
It's official: July was the Earth's hottest month on record (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 8/13/21)
Workers Are Dying Of Heat Outdoors Without Standards To Protect Them (NPR, 8/17/21)

Those are just a few of the countless headlines in papers across the country warning of the growing threat to farmworkers, and other outdoor workers, posed by steadily rising temperatures as the real-life impacts of long-term climate change become manifest.

Rachel Licker, a senior climate scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and an author of a recent UCS study on the threats posed to outdoor workers by the increasing number and intensity of dangerous heat waves, perhaps said it best in an interview this month with National Public Radio:

"The last seven years have been the hottest on record," said Rachel Licker, the senior climate scientist and an author of the UCS report, said in a statement. "Without additional protections, the risks to workers will only grow in the decades ahead as climate change worsens, leaving the roughly 32 million outdoor workers in our country to face a brutal choice: their health or their jobs." (read more)

The same NPR story goes on to address the lack of state and federal protections for farmworkers and other outdoor workers and to recommend several key policy changes to prevent and remedy heat stress in the years to come:

Lack Of Regulations Puts Outdoor Workers At Risk

In addition to the heightened risks posed by climate change, the UCS report highlights the lack of federal worker protections as a major issue for worker safety.

As NPR has previously reported, at least a dozen companies have had multiple employees die from environmental heat exposure. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has not adopted a national heat standard to safeguard workers and often decides not to penalize companies for worker deaths...

... Employers, the report says, should also implement mandatory heat safety plans, heat monitoring and reporting requirements, and multilingual training for supervisors and workers to facilitate better and faster responses to dangers imposed by extreme heat.

"We know this risk is worsening and has significant implications for workers, employers and the broader economy, so we need to be prepared," Licker said.

Last week, following weeks of research, data collection, and discussion, the Fair Food Program stepped into this breach and established important new heat safety standards for farmworkers under the FFP’s protections. In consultation with the Fair Food Standards Council (the third-party monitor that enforces the Fair Food Program Code of Conduct on Participating Farms), and with Participating Growers on the FFP’s Working Group (a collaborative body at the heart of the FFP that provides essential feedback on emerging issues necessary to develop practical regulations designed to remedy those issues), the CIW set forth enforceable standards requiring mandatory breaks; comprehensive, trilingual training; and emergency response protocols, effective immediately, on all Fair Food Program farms.

READ MORE ABOUT THE NEW FFP PROTECTIONS