After Cooper backs down on executive order, NC worker advocates push for protection
After Gov. Roy Cooper stopped short of issuing an executive order to protect the agricultural workforce on fields and in meat processing plants in the COVID-19 pandemic, several organizations on Friday turned their demands to the North Carolina Department of Labor.
After initially telling Latino advocacy groups he would issue an executive order, Cooper quietly backed out, telling members of the Farmworker Advocacy Network that opposition from state labor and agriculture officials would harm his ability to enforce the order.
In a Friday afternoon conference held virtually, farmworker advocacy groups including the North Carolina Justice Center, the AFL-CIO, NC Raise Up/Fight for $15, Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI-USA), Student Action for Farmworkers and the Episcopal Farmworker Ministry demanded that N.C. Department of Labor Commissioner Cherie Berry, a Republican, issue an Emergency Infectious Disease Standard to protect largely Latino immigrant essential workers, who have been hit disproportionately hard by the pandemic.
“Far too many of North Carolina’s essential workers are working in unsafe conditions to keep the state’s economy running in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic,” the organizations said in a joint press release. “These workers, while deemed essential, have been too often forced to work without adequate personal protective equipment, in crowded and poorly ventilated conditions, and without wellness checks.”
An Emergency Infectious Disease Standard, or Emergency Temporary Standard, is a set of mandatory infection control requirements that employers must implement. The AFL-CIO urged the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to issue the order in March.
OSHA denied this request and the AFL-CIO sued to compel the agency to issue a standard. It voiced support for a bill in Congress that would require OSHA to issue it. As of July, courts have upheld OSHA’s decision not to, according to the Laborers’ Health and Safety Fund of North America.
Such a standard was issued in Virginia on July 15 by its Department of Labor and approved by its governor.
“In times of crisis, we need leaders and leadership requires a moral compass, which means that we actually have to care for our fellow human brings,” said Rev. Fred Clarkson, the Spanish language ministry coordinator of the Episcopal Diocese of East Carolina.
“Secondly, we also need clarity — there is no dichotomy between the economy and people’s lives. Dead people don’t support economies, living people do,” Clarkson said. “Also, there isn’t a segmentation. If certain people get sick, eventually we will all get sick.”
Department of Labor response
In response to a request for comment, the department directed The N&O to its previously provided letter from Berry to Cooper opposing his executive order for worker protections.
“This EO, as currently drafted, represents overregulation of industries that are already facing tremendous hardship and that, in general, have shown a willingness to voluntarily comply with CDC guidance to protect their workers,” Berry wrote in late August. “Above all, the EO appears to overreach the Governor’s power by creating new legal requirements and implying that the NCDOL will enforce standards that exceed existing authority.”
Berry noted that while the NCDOL can be more stringent than federal safety standards, it “has chosen not to adopt more certain standards” regarding seasonal immigrant farmworkers’ temporary labor camps.
Berry also said in the letter that the implementation of the executive order “appears to violate the Sepration of Powers Clause of the NC Constitution” because it does not allow public comment.
Worker safety guidance was issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the state Department of Health and Human Services, but no mandatory safety requirements across essential workplaces like meatpacking plants and produce fields were issued.
As of August, cases across meatpacking plants in the state rose past 3,000 in more than 37 clusters in at least 20 counties, according to state health officials. They also report that outbreaks in immigrant farmworker housing camps have topped 1,700.
“A refusal to move forward with a comprehensive rule is an act of gross negligence that unnecessarily puts the lives of workers and their families at risk. Worker safety should be the NC DOL’s top priority in the midst of this devastating global pandemic,” the advocacy groups’ statement said.
This story was originally published September 18, 2020 at 4:50 PM with the headline "After Cooper backs down on executive order, NC worker advocates push for protection."
