A Sen. J.D. Vance-backed company exposed workers to “nightmare” conditions that saw ambulances rushing them to hospital with heat stroke symptoms frequently, a bombshell CNN report stated Tuesday.
As a venture capitalist, Vance (R-OH) sunk $150,000 into the start-up AppHarvest in Eastern Kentucky in 2017 and took a seat on the board of directors.
But conditions at the indoor-agriculture company deteriorated soon after its opening, former workers described to the network. Last year, three years after it went public, AppHarvest declared bankruptcy with hundreds of millions of dollars of debt.
“The rise and fall of the company, and Vance’s role in it, cuts against his image as a champion for the working class — an image that helped catapult him to the top of the Republican ticket as Donald Trump’s running mate,” CNN reported.
The network found that the company, “Not only failed as a business after pursuing rapid growth, but also provided a grim job experience for many of the working-class Kentuckians Vance has vowed to help.”
The company, made up of massive greenhouses in which crops were grown, exposed workers to temperatures up to 128 degrees, former workers told CNN.
“Complaints filed with the U.S. Department of Labor and a Kentucky regulator between 2020 and 2023 show that workers alleged they were given insufficient water breaks and weren’t provided adequate safety gear. Some workers said they suffered heat exhaustion or injuries, though state inspectors did not find violations,” CNN reported.
Workers told how tempting health care and work conditions that brought them to the company quickly deteriorated as management upped production and cut costs.
“I think about the hottest that I experienced was around 128 degrees,” worker Anthony Morgan said. “A couple days a week, you’d have an ambulance show up and you see people leaving on gurneys to go to the hospital.”
“I had to bring in my own N95 masks, because I was getting sick from the amount of mold and just nasty stuff that was in there,” worker Shelby Hester told CNN.
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She said workers were, “Routinely taken out of the greenhouse by medical personnel because they were suffering from heat stroke symptoms. Those who went to the doctor, she said, were told by managers that a doctor’s note was not a sufficient reason to miss a shift,” CNN reported.
Multiple former workers reported that, despite promising local jobs, the bulk of the staff was made up of contracted migrant workers.
Vance stepped down from the company in 2021, but remained an investor, CNN reported. Last year, as he became a senator, it was “mired in lawsuits filed by shareholders angry over its plummeting stock price and allegations of fraud,” according to CNN.
Luke Schroeder, a Vance spokesman, told CNN the senator, “Was not aware of the operational decisions regarding hiring, employee benefits, or other workplace policies which were made after he departed AppHarvest’s board. Like all early supporters, J.D. believed in AppHarvest’s mission and wishes the company would have succeeded.”
“It was a nightmare that should have never happened,” Morgan said of his experience overall.
“Making the decision to go to work at AppHarvest, like many of us made, the livelihood just went right down the drain,” he said. “I blame all of the original investors.”
