Local control making it the most free state in the country, Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, signed a law that prevents cities or counties from creating protections for workers who labor in extreme and dangerous heat on their own. And Florida gets hot.
Although there are no federal rules regulating when it’s too hot to work, there is one that protects workers from extreme heat without saying exactly what those protections are, people in agriculture, construction, or, basically, any job that requires workers to be out in the noonday sun like mad dogs and Englishmen in Florida have been asking for rules to protect them from heat especially as summers are becoming recognizably hotter each year. They want things like paid rest breaks, water, and access to shade when temperatures soar.
With the new law, the state legislature can override the elected officials of the state’s counties who want to take actions related to their communities when the heat and humidity become dangerous. Individual counties cannot decide their own rules regarding water, shade and rest.
Years ago, Arkansas or Missouri, could have even been both, passed a law that no individual municipalities could pass an ordinance protecting diversity but had to abide by the state-wide discrimination laws regardless of a community’s make up. It was directed toward recognizing Gay people as American citizens but could be applied to any group if done discreetly.
2023 was a very hot summer, so the timing of this new law seems a off unless deliberate.
When California required employers to provide shade, rest breaks, and access to cool, clean water for outdoor workers back in 2006, heat-related workers compensation claims dropped.
However, after Austin and Dallas created ordinances that required employers to provide paid water breaks to outdoor workers, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed a “preemption” law blocking local jurisdictions from making such rules so as to avoid a “patchwork” of differing local rules. It is an all or nothing thing, a thing easily handled by establishing relevant state-wide rules. But having all people suffer rather than find ways to alleviate the problem for everyone, seems to be the thinking.
Studies have shown that with regular breaks, shade, and water access most workers can stay relatively safe up to a heat index of about 83 degrees Fahrenheit with risks building quickly beyond that.
And, then there is the humidity on top of that.
The Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a farmworker organization based in south Florida has agreements with major companies they supply requiring them to provide safe working conditions, including water, shade, and rest breaks on a schedule dictated by heat conditions where he are.
Whenever we hear of some football player in high school dying from the heat at a pre-season practice and are saddened by it just remember, if the high school teams were in DeSantis’s high school athletic league, this would be an acceptable gamble. Otherwise, some teams would call off practice because of heat and humidity levels while some didn’t have to, and that would be too patchworkish.
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