The Company JD Vance Bankrolled Known For ‘nightmare’ Work Environment

CNN reported that AppHarvest, the company the VEEP hopeful propped up with millions of dollars in seed capital, already had a bad reputation with its employees for a brutal and unfair work environment where basic safety measures were routinely ignored when Vance helped with funding.

“Eastern Kentucky is well-known for people coming and going. They start up companies, then they disappear,” former AppHarvest worker Anthony Morgan told CNN. “They didn’t care about us.”

However, once managers became pressured to increase production quotas, employees were forced to work long and unsafe hours while the company cut employer-sponsored health coverage.

One employee recalls a time when they were forced to work in 128-degree temperatures. He says: “A couple of days a week, you’d have an ambulance show up, and you saw people leaving on gurneys to go to the hospital.” He was finally fired for taking medical time off to care for an injury he sustained on the job.

Vance was an early investor, a board member, and a public pitchman for the indoor-agriculture company over a four year span.

The rise and fall of the company shows the grim truth behind the reality of the success and decline of many large companies that an abusive work environment pushing employees to the brink is the only way to turn a profit. It also calls into question what Vance really does to support the impoverished community in Appalachia.

Hester says she performed well in the first few months of her new job, despite the high greenhouse temperatures and long working hours. However, she also says that the company did not provide adequate safety gear, quickly dragging her performance. “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,” she said.

She says to mitigate the high turnover, the company soon turned to illegal migrant farm workers from Guatemala and Mexico.

“They brought Mitch McConnell into the greenhouse, and they sent every single Hispanic worker home before he got there,” Hester told CNN. “He then proceeded to have a speech about how we were taking the jobs from the Mexicans.”

Several complaints show that the company denied workers needed water breaks and did not provide health and safety gear.

Instead, the company, desperate to increase profits, quickly turned to underpaid migrant labor and unsafe working conditions made to force more output from employees.

However, many people say that Vance’s connection to the company shows an established pattern of companies taking advantage of desperate people. “Eastern Kentucky is well-known for people coming and going. They start up companies, then they disappear,” said former AppHarvest worker Anthony Morgan. “They didn’t care about us.”