As Florida continues to bake, Biden announces ways to protect workers from extreme heat
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As South Florida, like much of the nation, sweats through a record-breaking hot summer, President Joe Biden on Thursday announced steps to help American workers stay safe in extreme heat. Local advocates say these moves don’t go far enough to protect workers.
The region has seen more heat advisories and dangerously hot days than ever before, and ocean temperatures have reached heights that are deadly for coral reefs and fish. At least one farm worker in Homestead has died from the unprecedented summer heat.
“Ocean temperatures near Miami are like stepping in a hot tub. It just topped 100 degrees. 100 degrees!” Biden said during a press conference about his administration’s action plan. “That’s more like jumping in a hot tub than jumping in an ocean to ride a wave.”
Biden’s protections for Americans from extreme heat include directing the U.S. Department of Labor to conduct even more inspections of potentially dangerous work sites, like farms and construction sites, as well as stricter enforcement of heat safety violations.
“I don’t know why it took them so long to do this, but they need to act quicker because things are only getting worse,” said Yvette Cruz, a spokesperson for the Florida Farmworker Association.
Last week, the Farmworker Association held a vigil for a 29-year-old man who died while picking fruit on a Homestead farm on July 6, in the middle of a record-breaking streak of hot summer weather in South Florida.
Biden’s actions may step up the pace of existing protections in Florida, but Miami-Dade County is on track to institute some of the strictest heat protections statewide, a first U.S. county-level standard for worker safety on hot days.
Already, climate change has made South Florida’s hottest days more common, and scientists expect the trend to continue as long as countries keep pumping more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
“This has been the worst summer so far and I don’t want next summer to be even worse,” Cruz said. “I fear for more lives. We’re only in July, and we still have August and September to go. I’m not looking forward to more deaths.”
In recent years, OSHA has fined several Florida employers over the deaths of their employees from extreme heat. The most recent was an unnamed 28-year-old man who died on his first day of work at C.W. Hendrix Farms in Parkland. The farm operator was fined about $15,000 in connection with the worker’s fatality.
Biden also directed the labor department to issue “heat hazard alerts” whenever temperatures get high, reminding workers that they have some federal protections from extreme heat and offering employers tips how to keep their workers safe.
“We should be protecting workers from hazardous conditions, and we will,” the president said. “In those states that don’t, I’m going to be calling them out for refusing to protect those workers.”
The federal government does not explicitly require employers to provide water, rest and shade on hot days to workers, but advocates have been pushing OSHA to formalize those rules, a process that began in 2021.
A Texas lawmaker, Democratic Rep. Greg Casar, led an 8-hour protest in front of the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday to highlight the lack of protections for outdoor workers in high heat. He — and other advocacy groups — encouraged OSHA to hurry up and announce the nationwide heat standard it has had in the works for years.
The protest followed a Monday letter from more than 100 members of Congress calling on the labor department to speed implementation of the heat standard, which would likely require employers to provide water, rest and shade for workers on hot days. Attorneys general from several states, including New York, California and Illinois — not Florida — also sent a similar letter earlier this year.
With federal protections lacking, that means workers rely on a patchwork of state protections, which vary greatly.
Most states, including Florida, do not have explicit heat protections on the books for workers. Only a few states — including California, Oregon and Minnesota — have formal protections that require workers be given water, rest and shade on hot days.
This summer, Texas overrode city-level policies mandating that outdoor workers be given water and breaks on hot days — part of a state bill blocking all local laws that don’t match up with a state law critics have dubbed the “Death Star” bill.
Florida’s attempts to pass a bill that only recommended such protections, with no penalties for failing to do so, failed without passing for the last three years running.
Oscar Londoño, co-executive director of WeCount!, an advocacy group that represents outdoor workers and has been pushing Miami-Dade County to draft the first county-level heat protections in the country, called Biden’s announcement a step in the right direction. But, he said in a statement, “these actions are too small for the scale of this crisis and will not be enough to save lives.”
Londoño called on the federal government to create specific rules requiring companies to give workers water and shaded breaks on hot days and to increase staffing at OSHA to enforce those rules. He also called on the White House to make sure heat protections are enforced on federal contracts and called on local governments to create their own heat standards.
“We do not need any more alerts or advisories,” he wrote. “We need to listen to workers and take bold action now.”
Miami-Dade County took the first step toward creating its own heat protections for outdoor workers on July 18.
Commissioners Kionne McGhee and Marleine Bastien introduced a heat standard bill that would require companies to train their workers on how to recognize the signs of heat illness and administer first aid in an emergency. The bill also would require employers to give their workers water and 10-minute breaks in the shade every two hours on days when the heat index hits 90 degrees.
The bill passed its first reading on a unanimous 11-0 vote. Now, it heads to a meeting before the commission’s health committee tentatively scheduled for Sept. 11. The bill can be modified or rejected in committee. If it passes, it will have to pass a final vote before the full commission to become law.
McGhee said his office is working with worker groups like WeCount! and farm owners in his South Dade district to make sure the bill succeeds.
“There are some things that need to be tweaked, that we’re going to tweak, but we have time to do that now,” McGhee said shortly after the bill passed its first reading, but he didn’t specify the tweaks.
This climate report is funded by Florida International University, the Knight Foundation and the David and Christina Martin Family Foundation in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners. The Miami Herald retains editorial control of all content.
This story was originally published July 27, 2023 at 3:44 PM.
