Support Senate Bill 662: Labor/Farmworkers’ Health & Safety Amendments

Bill Sponsors

• Sen. Floyd B. McKissick, Jr. (D-Durham, Granville)
• Sen. Eleanor Kinnaird (D-Orange, Chatham)

Background

Farmwork is some of the most difficult, most dangerous and most important work in our community.  North Carolina is home to roughly 150,000 farmworkers.  The vast majority of the fruits and vegetables we eat are picked by hand.  However, the people who feed our families through their hard work are often among the worst paid and least protected workers in our state.    

Read the bill here.

Goals

1. Raise migrant housing standards to ensure farmworkers have safe and dignified living conditions by requiring locks on doors and windows, allowing farmworkers to have visitors, providing locked storage facilities for personal items, ensuring access to laundry facilities, maintaining the grounds and housing, and providing separate showers for every 10 workers.
2. Requiring the NC Department of Labor to establish procedures for identifying and prosecuting the most serious migrant housing violators, and ensuring that DOL has bilingual capacity to perform its regulatory duties.

Take Action

1. Contact the NC Commissioner of Labor and your legislator to ask them to support SB 662.

Labor Commissioner Cherie Berry

NC Department of Labor

919-807-2796

Commissioners.Office@labor.nc.gov

To find your legislator, go to:

http://www.ncga.state.nc.us/representation/WhoRepresentsMe.aspx

2. Ask the Senate Rules Committee Chair to let the bill be heard.

Sen. Tom Apodaca

(919) 733-5745

Tom.Apodaca@ncleg.net

(Buncombe, Henderson, Transylvania)

3. Write a letter to the editor of your local paper in favor of SB 662.

Download FAN’s letter to the editor toolkit: http://www.ncfan.org/write-to-your-newspaper.  If you do write a letter, please let us know at harvestofdignity@gmail.com.