Before becoming a U.S. senator, JD Vance (R-Ohio) worked as a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley. He funded several fledgling companies. One of which was an Eastern Kentucky-based agriculture start-up being accused of a hellish 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.
Former Workers Have Spoken Out
Although the company has since gone under, AppHarvest’s former employees have spoken out about the abusive and unsafe work environments. They ultimately undermine the Ohio’s senator’s claims of being a champion of the working class and impoverished workers in Appalachia.
“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.”
The Company Started Out With a Good Environment
Several former employees agree that they were treated well and fairly when the company first began. They were given benefits packages and competitive wages for the area.
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.
AppHarvest
AppHarvest Inc. is an American food production company that works directly with indoor farms in Appalachia. The company sold itself as a company dedicated to hiring economically distressed individuals from areas like Eastern Kentucky.
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’s Involvement
At the time of writing his bestselling memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, Vance was sitting on the board of directors for the company next to people like Martha Stewart.
Vance was an early investor, a board member, and a public pitchman for the indoor-agriculture company over a four year span.
AppHarvest Declared Bankruptcy
Last year, the company faced hundreds of millions of dollars in debt and was forced to declare bankruptcy.
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.
Employees Feel Duped By the Companies Message
Shelby Hester, a woman who was hired at AppHarvest’s largest greenhouse in Morehead, Kentucky, as a crop specialist in 2021, said that he was initially intrigued by the company’s messaging of sustainable agriculture.
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.
Hiring Illegal Migrant Labor
Hester also alleges that the company soon experienced extremely high employee turnover due to the harsh working conditions.
She says to mitigate the high turnover, the company soon turned to illegal migrant farm workers from Guatemala and Mexico.
Hidden Practices
The migrant workers were sent home when Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) toured the greenhouse. It is assumed that the company’s higher-ups knew McConnell would not be happy to see the migrant laborers.
“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.”
Official Complaints Filed
Between 2020 and 2023, official complaints were filed with the US Department of Labor and a Kentucky regulator regarding allegations of the company.
Several complaints show that the company denied workers needed water breaks and did not provide health and safety gear.
A Slap in the Face to the Local Economy
The company’s mission, and the message that JD Vance has espoused many times over his career, was to provide economic relief for impoverished families in the Appalachia mountains.
Instead, the company, desperate to increase profits, quickly turned to underpaid migrant labor and unsafe working conditions made to force more output from employees.
Vance Plays Dumb
A spokesperson for Vance, Luke Schroeder, said that the VP hopeful “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, JD believed in AppHarvest’s mission and wishes the company would have succeeded.”
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.”
