“We've had to go back to our customers and request additional compensation to be able to make sure our drivers were getting paid enough,” an owner of a trucking company said.
At least 65 farmworkers have died from heat-related causes since 2002, according to an Investigate Midwest analysis of OSHA data. The Biden administration has promised to address the dangers of extreme heat in workplaces.
At times, the H-2A visa program that brings non-citizen farmworkers to the U.S. has been used to facilitate human trafficking, experts and activisits said. But the number of people trafficked through the program appears to have increased.
Farms across the Midwest are struggling to hire domestic employees. In Illinois, the number of foreign agricultural workers has increased more than 250% in the past five years.
Some states have enforced rules to prevent COVID-19's spread among farmworkers, but the federal government hasn't done so, leaving many workers unprotected, advocates said.
