Julie Su, Acting Secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor Credit: Courtesy of the U.S. Department of Labor's Office of the Secretary

As working people in Florida grapple with staying safe on the job amid rising temperatures, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Acting Secretary Julie Su visited Orlando on Friday to discuss heat stress protection on the job with local workers.

“We know that we can’t improve jobs or make sure every job is a good job if we don’t also combat those exploitative working conditions that too many workers have had to endure for too long,” Su told Orlando Weekly on Thursday, in a phone call ahead of her visit. “So coming to Florida this time is really about talking to vulnerable workers about heat and about some of the working conditions they endure that they shouldn’t have to.”

As part of a national tour of local communities that also stopped in Pembroke Pines in June, Su met up with local agricultural and construction workers Friday morning at the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades union hall in Orlando, off Oak Ridge Road, along with U.S. Congressman and pro-labor Democrat Maxwell Frost.

Both are on a mission to raise awareness locally and across the country of the dangers that extreme heat can pose to both indoor and outdoor workers on the job, as well as a proposed rule from the Biden administration that, if finalized, would establish the first and only federal standard designed specifically to help protect about 36 million U.S. workers from heat-related injuries, illness and death on the job.

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The rule, which could still take years to finalize through the government’s regulatory process, would establish basic mandates for employers, such as coming up with a heat injury and illness prevention plan. It also proposes establishing two heat index thresholds, requiring certain protections for workers, such as water breaks, once temperatures on job sites exceed 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Other protections, such as mandatory 15-minute rest breaks every two hours, would kick in once the heat index surpasses 90 degrees.

As part of the regulatory process, however, the government must seek comment from the public, and any business groups or employers who wish to weigh in on the proposal.

It’s a collaborative effort that, admittedly, could be gutted if Democrats lose the White House this November. Under the Trump administration, for instance, OSHA’s enforcement of health and safety regulations notably declined, and Florida doesn’t have its own state regulators to pick up the slack.

Ernesto Ruiz, a research coordinator for the nonprofit Farmworker Association of Florida, recently told watchdog reporter Jason Garcia that Florida farm workers, as it is, often have to make a deliberate and “tragic” calculation on the job, even when they are offered unpaid water or rest breaks. Many are paid not by the hour or paid a salary, but by the piece, or by their output.

“We also hear quite commonly that they [workers] forgo drinking water because, as they drink water and as they get hydrated, they’re going to have to take a bathroom break,” Ruiz told Garcia, for his podcast Seeking Rents.

Under federal rules, bathrooms for farm workers should be no further than a quarter of a mile from their worksite, but Ruiz said that’s often not the case. “We hear of workers having to walk 20 minutes each way to the bathroom, and that’s too much of a calculation for them, too much of a loss in their potential earnings,” he explained. “So they dehydrate themselves knowingly, and suffer harsh consequences of it.”

Acting U.S. Labor Secretary Julie Su visits workers in Arizona on Thursday, Aug. 9, to discuss a proposed federal rule for heat stress protections in the workplace. Credit: Courtesy of the U.S. Department of Labor's Office of the Secretary

The impact of extreme heat exposure on the job has been a contentious issue in the business-friendly state of Florida, where extreme heat warnings during summer months are the new norm, and influential business groups have, nonetheless, lobbied state leaders against heat-related workplace regulation.

Despite a broad requirement under OSHA for employers to ensure a hazard-free workplace, there is no specific federal standard in place for workplaces that addresses extreme heat exposure, nor does Florida have any state standard (or a state OSHA department, for the record).

Even more, a bill (HB 433) recently signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis also now bans local governments from coming up with their own standards, in the absence of state action, to protect their local communities. The law was first introduced for consideration after workers organized for a local rule in Miami-Dade County to protect construction and agricultural workers, who labor in excessively hot conditions during the state’s hottest months.

This was the first effort of its kind in Florida — and it was killed by industry lobbyists who argued that employer mandates were unnecessary, saying it would create a patchwork of regulations and inconvenience business owners.

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The stakes of lacking regulation, however, are high. According to the World Health Organization, heat is now the leading cause of weather-related deaths globally, and in the U.S., heat-related deaths have similarly reached a record high. Last year, more than 2,300 deaths in the U.S. were tied to extreme heat, the Associated Press reported, representing the highest number in 45 years of records.

But worker advocates, including those with the Farmworker Association, have also emphasized the disturbance extreme heat poses to workers’ quality of life, even in the absence of major health or safety scares. After a long day on the job — outdoors in the heat, or stuck in a hot kitchen in a restaurant or service setting — workers return to their families exhausted, and less physically and mentally available for their children and spouses.

Su, a former Secretary of Labor for the state of California, has made a point of lifting up the new federal rule proposed to address extreme heat on the job.  Su was first nominated by Biden for U.S. Labor Secretary last February, after former Labor Secretary Marty Walsh resigned from the post to take a job with the National Hockey League Players Association.

Su has a strong backing from U.S. labor unions, according to the New York Times, but has faced some pushback from Republicans and (perhaps more directly) business groups that see her attention to the enforcement of minimum wage laws, workplace safety protections, and her efforts to strengthen workers’ rights as a threat.

Florida, for its part, has been criticized by worker advocates in the past for lack of attention to minimum wage enforcement, and recently loosened child labor regulations designed to protect youth of working age on the job.

Heat, however, is an inescapable reality for millions of working people in Florida who rely on their jobs to make rent, to take care of their families, and to serve communities who need their linemen, their construction workers and their farm workers to help put food on the table, too.

“This is really not an issue that is isolated to any one industry, any one demographic, or any one region,” Su told Orlando Weekly. “There have been some states and also some cities that have taken it upon themselves to develop heat standards to protect workers,” she continued, referencing laws passed in state like California, Washington, Oregon, and Minnesota. “Unfortunately, in both Florida and in Texas, the governor of those states told cities, ‘You can’t do that.’”

The federal standard that OSHA is proposing, she added, “sends a clear message to all workers, including those in Florida, that that federal law will protect you, that there will be a floor beneath which you should not have to live and work.”

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This article appears in Aug 7-13, 2024.

General news reporter for Orlando Weekly, with a focus on state and local government and workers' rights. You can find her bylines in Creative Loafing Tampa Bay, In These Times, and Facing South.