"NC Farm And Poultry Workers Demand Stricter COVID-19 Protections From State Officials", 4 Dec 2020

...[Food and poultry] workers are often immigrants and refugees from Mexico and Central America, fearful of sharing what they experience at work and being fired or deported.

... A report from the Economic Policy Institute explains that there isn’t an actual breakdown of who works in...[the US food and meatpacking] industries. But with the help of U.S. Census data, the report shows that, nationally, nearly 71% of foreign-born workers in meatpacking are not U.S. citizens...

Hoping for change, [Esmeralda] Dominguez[, a representative for Episcopal Farmworkers Ministry,] and other organizers helped workers send a petition to the North Carolina Department of Labor back in November. They demanded the state establish rules for emergency standards in the workplace or set strict requirements for their employers to follow during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In an eleven-page response, State Labor Commissioner Cherie Berry denied their petition...

The state department of labor didn’t fulfill our request for an interview but shared Commissioner Berry’s response to the workers’ petition. She wrote that setting stricter rules in industries like farming and meatpacking would be government overreach... She goes on to explain the Department of Labor has instead approached COVID-19 safety from an educational standpoint -- advising workers in plants on what they should do to protect themselves during the pandemic...

The Episcopal Farmworker Ministry and other groups are now pushing a Wake County judge to force the Department of Labor to set protections for workers from COVID-19...