The Human Cost of House Plants: Labor Conditions of Florida’s Plant Nursery Workers
On February 14th, 2026, Partners for Dignity & Rights joined WeCount! and Dēmos to celebrate the release of our new co-published report The Human Cost of Houseplants and to support plant nursery workers sharing the exploitative and dangerous conditions they face on the job. Featured in the Miami Herald and Prism Reports, the press conference uplifted the voices of plant nursery workers fighting for a safe, dignified workplace free of exploitation, sexual assault, and harassment.
The houseplant industry is thriving. From boutique plant shops to big-box stores and garden centers, the demand for houseplants has surged across the United States in recent years, and the nursery industry as a whole has an annual revenue of $50 billion. But there is a stark contradiction behind this success story: The workers who cultivate, care for, and distribute these plants often labor under conditions that are dangerous, degrading, and unjust. The Human Cost of House Plants: Labor Conditions of Florida’s Plant Nursery Workers, a report co-published by Dēmos, WeCount! and Partners for Dignity and Rights, details the conditions that these workers, the majority of whom are immigrant women from Latin America and the Caribbean, face–and introduces these workers’ solution to the systemic exploitation that they face: Planting Justice, a Worker-driven Social Responsibility program adapted to the plant nursery industry.
Policies Fail to Protect Plant Nursery Workers
The evolution of the Planting Justice program is emblematic of the innovative solutions that low-wage workers have developed to win protections, even as government institutions fail to adequately protect their rights.
Like other agricultural workers in the United States, plant nursery workers are excluded from many federal labor laws, including protections for the fundamental right to organize and collectively bargain. This report details the origins of these racist exclusions and how these policies, which initially targeted Black workers, remain, even as the demographics of the workforce have shifted.
More recently, bids to get the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to develop federal workplace heat standards have repeatedly stalled under opposition from lobbyists representing big businesses. Workers in Florida’s agricultural industry, including those organizing with WeCount! responded to the dangerous working conditions that outdoor workers face as climate change makes Florida’s already hot seasons even hotter. WeCount! organized a campaign to win workplace heat protection standards in Miami-Dade County. When the ordinance was introduced in July 2023, the bill attracted national attention as “the first county-level workplace heat protections in the United States,” and would have provided new rights to nearly 100,000 workers. But this victory for worker safety was short-lived. Corporations across Florida, including leading indoor plant provider Costa Farms, organized a lobbying campaign opposing the bill (details of this effort are included in the report). In the end, Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill blocking city and county governments from passing heat protections. This made Florida the second state, after Texas to block local governments from enacting heat protections. As the Federal government is increasingly intractable, and Federal protections for low-wage workers have long been limited, local and state protections had been one of the avenues for co-governance, allowing community and worker organizations to take on a meaningful role in rule-making and enforcement. Successful examples of this include PDR’s long-time partners Chinese Progressive Association in California and Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en la Lucha (CTUL) in Minnesota.
Blocked by state governments, WeCount! changed tactics and has collaborated with Partners for Dignity and Rights staff to focus on winning workplace protections by developing a Worker-driven Social Responsibility standard adapted to the plant nursery industry.
Participatory Research Shapes Worker-Driven Standards
Following the state preemption of their heat standards campaign, workers organizing with WeCount! pivoted to explore private-sector solutions: binding enforceable agreements signed by brands at the top of the supply chain they labor in. Partners for Dignity and Rights has supported numerous organizations as they have innovated in this model, dubbed Worker-driven Social Responsibility (WSR) and anchors the WSR Network to support cross-sector learning.
Partners for Dignity and Rights staff supported WeCount! in developing the survey which provides the data at the heart of The Human Cost of House Plants. Using participatory research methods, workers and organizers conducted peer-to-peer interviews with current and former workers in the plant nursery. Their responses document long hours in extreme heat, often without access to water, shade, or rest, as well as patterns of exposure to harmful pesticides, lack of medical care for injuries, and widespread sexual harassment. In addition to these dangerous working conditions, this report documents low wages and wage theft, and discrimination, harassment, and retaliation.
In addition to forming the backbone of this report, these worker surveys have helped guide the adaptation of the Worker-driven Social Responsibility (WSR) model to the plant industry. WSR programs have a demonstrated track record of success protecting basic human rights and safety standards in complex supply chains across agriculture and apparel industries. Using these worker surveys as a road map, WeCount! and plant nursery workers developed a Code of Conduct to define Planting Justice with the support of Partners for Dignity and Rights. This Code defines basic dignified conditions including fair wages and benefits, safe working conditions, and protections from job hazards like extreme heat, pesticides, and lightning storms.
Like other WSR programs, Planting Justice will be based on binding agreements between brands and a worker organization (in this case, WeCount!) creating a market-driven enforcement mechanism to uphold worker rights. By placing workers at the center of enforcement and accountability, the model ensures that rights are actionable and upheld in practice. Through organizing, education, and solidarity, workers are planting the seeds of a more just future—one rooted in fair pay, safe working conditions, dignity, and respect.
Corporations Are Responsible for Working Conditions
Around the globe, consensus is building that decades of voluntary corporate social responsibility standards have failed to protect workers. Instead, legally binding, enforceable agreements like WSR programs have emerged as a highly effective solution to protect worker rights and ensure safe workplaces by addressing the root causes of abuses.
The Human Cost of House Plants names the corporate buyers whose purchasing practices help shape this $50 billion industry. In Florida, Costa Farms acts as both a grower and a distributor, purchasing plants from smaller nurseries. These plants are then sold across the country at a range of outlets, including Costco, Home Depot, Ikea, Lowes, Trader Joe’s, Walmart, and Whole Foods.
These companies now have the opportunity to join Planting Justice, the adaptation of a proven model to end abuses and exploitation and launch a new era of corporate accountability for the plant nursery industry.
