from Sharelle Burt

15 August 2024

Well, that can’t mean anything good….

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CNN reports that The working conditions at Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance’s former startup AppHarvest are described as a “nightmare.”

After facing hundreds of millions of dollars in debt, AppHarvest filed for bankruptcy in 2023. Dozens of former employees described their experiences as less than pleasant, while Vance vowed to help Kentucky workers. Public documents and interviews show that employees were forced to work in grueling conditions in the company’s greenhouse while temperatures soared above 100 degrees.

Between 2020 and 2023, several complaints were filed with the U.S. Department of Labor and a Kentucky regulator alleging that workers were given few water breaks and barely provided adequate safety equipment during startup. Some workers admitted to suffering heat exhaustion or injuries, but state inspectors never found any violations.

According to the New Republic former AppHarvest employeesR Anthony Morgan accused the company of forcing him and his colleagues to work on a 49 degree day. “I think the hottest I’ve ever experienced was 49 degrees,” Morgan said. “A few days a week an ambulance would come and you’d see people being taken to hospital on stretchers.”

Morgan said things were going great when he was hired, but then everything changed. Production fell behind and workers were pressured to increase production. Then the company cut health insurance benefits and other costs, but increased hours and reduced breaks.

Vance invested in several Silicon Valley startups following the success of his 2016 memoir, Hillbilly Elegy. In an interview with Fox News, AppHarvest founder Jonathan Webb said the Ohio trial lawyer gave him a check for $150,000 to invest in AppHarvest while other investors invested $50,000 each. The startup caught Vance’s eye because of its guiding principles, which he claimed a company should not only make a profit but also help American communities, which was the reason for his investment decision.

As a food production company, AppHarvest promised a high-tech future for the Eastern Kentucky farming community. Vance got on board early as an investor, board member and public advocate for the indoor farming company. “It’s not just a good investment opportunity, it’s a great business that’s making a big difference in the world,” Vance said during a 2021 Fox Business interview on the same day the company went public in February.

Although the company promised to hire within Kentucky, it ended up hiring migrant workers from Mexico, Guatemala and elsewhere. Then, when Vance resigned in 2021 to run for the Ohio Senate seat, the company was drowning in lawsuits from shareholders angry over falling stock prices and allegations of fraud. Former employees wanted Vance and other board members held accountable for turning their backs after misleading the public and their own investors. “Eastern Kentucky is known for people coming and going. They start companies and then disappear,” said former AppHarvest employee Morgan.

“They didn’t care about us.”

Luke Schroeder, a spokesman for Vance, issued a statement saying the politician was “not informed of the operational decisions regarding hiring, employee benefits or other workplace policies made after he left AppHarvest’s board” and said he simply wanted the company to thrive. “Like all early supporters, JD believed in AppHarvest’s mission and wished the company had succeeded,” the statement said.

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