North Carolina Labor Commissioner Luke Farley announced this week a new advisory body created to strengthen worker protection and address heat stress in the workplace.
The state's new Heat Stress Advisory Council includes 14 representatives of different industries like agriculture and construction, who employ people who work outdoors.
“The safety of North Carolina’s workers is my top priority,” Farley said in a news release. “This Council will bring together a cross section of experts, employers, and worker representatives to promote best practices.”
The new council includes the following:
- Wendell Powell, State Employees Association of North Carolina
- Rick Armstrong, Teamsters Local 391
- Rep. Ben Moss, R-Moore, Richmond
- Scott Mullins, Professional Fire Fighters & Paramedics of North Carolina
- Summer Lanier, North Carolina Poultry Federation
- Linda Andrews, North Carolina Farm Bureau
- Lee Wicker, North Carolina Growers Association
- Gregg Thompson, North Carolina National Federation of Independent Businesses
- Mark Metzler, North Carolina Nursery & Landscape Association
- Jay Stem, North Carolina Aggregates Association
- Christi Powell, Associated Builders & Contractors
- Tim Minton, North Carolina Homebuilders Association
- Jeffrey Lee, North Carolina Agribusiness Council
- Roy Lindsey, North Carolina Pork Council
In a statement, Commissioner Farley said the council will recommend heat safety standards, review existing laws and evaluate regulations, with the goal of protecting workers from preventable injuries and unsafe conditions.
Heat-related deaths in NC
The announcement comes as the state experiences extreme heat waves with recorded heat indices of more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
Last year, Juan José Ceballos, a seasonal farmworker who arrived from Mexico to work, died from heat-related illness last year in Wayne County.
José Arturo Gonzalez Mendoza, also a seasonal Mexican worker, died in 2023 from an unspecified illness related to a cancerous tumor, but heat is widely believed by labor advocates to have affected him.
The dangers of heat stress on blue collar outdoor workers in North Carolina was the primary focus of WUNC's "Scorched Workers" series published last year.
The project focused on seasonal Mexican farmworkers who primarily work in the tobacco and sweet potato industries with temporary H-2A visas.
The North Carolina Growers Association, which is part of the new Heat Stress Advisory Council, is the largest employer in the state — and the country — of seasonal H-2A farmworkers, according to the state Department of Labor. The association helps bring several thousand Mexican workers to help farmers meet the demand of the state's labor-intensive crops.
Labor activists left out
Noticeably absent from the new advisory council are representatives from ten different environmental and labor rights organizations who organized last year as the NC Heat Stress Coalition.
The group delivered a letter to the Department of Labor last December to demand that Farley — then the Republican Labor Commissioner-elect — to prioritize heat safety protections in his term.
The coalition includes labor activists, the AFL-CIO, and unions that represent migrant farmworkers and service workers.
In his campaign for Labor Commissioner, Farley previously told WUNC that he wanted to address heat protections, but was opposed to adopting the first-ever federal heat safety stress rule from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
"I will, as labor commissioner, propose an alternative that focuses on our state, but with input from all stakeholders, both workers and job creators coming together and say, 'What is a reasonable, workable alternative to what the federal government has proposed?" he told WUNC. "And let me tell you, it would be centered around rest, water, and shade."
