‘Our lives hang in the balance’: Miami plant nursery workers march for protections

This story was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center

Hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets of Coral Gables on Friday, marching with Miami-Dade plant nursery workers as they fight for safer working conditions.

Led by workers’ rights group WeCount, the protesters marched two miles up U.S. 1 in the Coral Gables area between 42nd and 27th Avenues, stopping along the way at Trader Joe’s, Target, Aldi, Home Depot and Sprouts — all suppliers of the houseplants the workers grow, trim and ship around the country.

As part of their Planting Justice Program, WeCount called on those stores to only stock houseplants from nurseries that abide by a legally binding, worker-developed code of conduct that provides for safer working conditions, like heat protections and monitoring by an independent oversight body.

“We’re demanding justice and dignity,” shouted Ana Mejia, who worked in plant nurseries before becoming a worker leader with WeCount, over the crowd’s chorus of “sí, se puede.”

Nearly half of all houseplants in the United States originate in Miami-Dade nurseries, and for more than a decade, Mejia had a hand in growing them.

She recalled laboring for hours under a beating sun, breathing South Florida’s soupy summer air as she trimmed plants at an exceptional clip – 101 per hour – to meet her quotas.

Early on a September morning in 2022, she began to feel lightheaded as she worked. Her body started to convulse. She was in the throes of a heat stroke, but was afraid to say anything to her boss. She was making minimum wage, then $10 an hour, and worried about being able to feed her kids and pay her rent if she lost a day of work — or her job.

“My life is in danger,” she recalled thinking. “What will happen to my kids?”

Mejia’s story tracks with data collected recently by WeCount, which polled hundreds of Miami-Dade plant nursery workers.

Nearly 90 percent of respondents reported injuries or illness on the job — afflictions that spanned heat stroke to exposure to pesticides. One third said they had no access to drinking water, while 60 percent had never received a paid sick day.

The worker-led push comes two years after construction and agriculture interests successfully lobbied the Florida Legislature to ban local governments from passing heat protections for workers, even during the hot summer months.

So with little legislative recourse, the nursery workers are taking their message directly to the stores that sell their plants – and the customers who buy them.

The strategy is inspired by the Fair Food Program, a Florida-born initiative in which farmworkers successfully convinced major produce buyers, including Taco Bell, McDonald’s, Whole Foods and Walmart, to only source from farms that agreed to a code of conduct that provides for water, rest and shade as well as independent oversight.

The Fair Food Program went global. It now protects thousands of farmworkers and has been replicated in other industries, including dairy and apparel.

But whether it takes off with plant nurseries remains to be seen. WeCount emailed letters to a number of major retailers asking to talk. Only Ikea responded – to say that it already has a “supplier code of conduct.”

“At this stage, we do not need to set up a meeting,” Ikea wrote in a March 26 letter to WeCount that was reviewed by the Herald.

Protesters persisted nevertheless, marching their message, contract in hand, into stores up and down Coral Gables’ stretch of U.S. 1.

At each stop, a contingent of no more than 10 workers and organizers broke from the group, walked inside and pitched whoever was in charge on Planting Justice, explaining what the working conditions are like at the nurseries that supply the retailers’ plants.

Store managers by and large received them warmly but said that sourcing decisions were above their pay grade.

A Home Depot spokesperson sent a statement to the Herald saying that they set sourcing standards and take “allegations of labor rights abuses seriously.”

Home Depot’s standards include providing a “safe and healthy working environment in accordance with applicable laws and regulations.”

There is no federal standard that sets a maximum temperature or defines mandatory heat protections.

Read more: Miami farm workers’ last hope for heat protection regs appears dead under Trump

The demonstration on Friday, with a heat index projected to hit 100 degrees, kicked off Miami-Dade’s heat season, which now arrives earlier, lasts longer and is more intense because of climate change.

Florida leads the nation in heat-related illnesses, emergency room visits and hospitalizations, according to the Florida Policy Institute.

“Our lives hang in the balance at these nurseries,” said Mejia, the former nursery worker. But major retailers “generate millions of dollars at the expense of our lives.”

This story was produced with financial support from supporters including The Green Family Foundation Trust and Ken O’Keefe, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners, as well as the Lynn and Louis Wolfson II Family Foundation and MSC Cruises. The Miami Herald maintains full editorial control of this work.

This story was originally published May 2, 2026 at 10:30 AM.