Florida Governor Ron DeStantis has signed a law that prevents cities or counties from creating protections for workers who labor in the state’s often extreme and dangerous heat.
Two million people in Florida, from construction to agriculture, work outside in often humid, blazing heat.
For years, many of them have asked for rules to protect them from heat: paid rest breaks, water, and access to shade when temperatures soar. After years of negotiations, such rules were on the agenda in Miami-Dade County, home to an estimated 300,000 outdoor workers.
But the new law, signed Thursday evening, blocks such protections from being implemented in cities and counties across the state.
Miami-Dade pulled its local heat protection rule from consideration after the statewide bill passed the legislature in March.
“It’s outrageous that the state legislature will override the elected officials of Miami Dade or other counties that really recognize the importance of protecting that community of workers,” says David Michaels, an epidemiologist at George Washington University and a former administrator at the federal Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA).
The loss of the local rule was a major blow to Miami-Dade activists and workers who had hoped the county heat protection rules would be in place before summer.
In Texas, Austin and Dallas created ordinances that required employers to provide paid water breaks to outdoor workers. But last year Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed a “preemption” law that blocked local jurisdictions from making such rules. The goal, Abbott’s office said, was to prevent a “patchwork” of differing local rules, which they contended would cause confusion for businesses in the state.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has signed a law that prevents cities or counties from creating protections for workers who labor in the state’s often extreme and dangerous heat.
And this year will likely be the hottest summer in Florida’s history," says Esteban Wood, director of the advocacy group We-Count, one of the organizations working on heat protections in Miami-Dade.
The new law, he says, represents “a profound loss for not only the campaign but for all the families that have for many years been fighting for the minimum—which was just water, shade and rest, and the right to return home after work alive.”
Despite the increasing risks, there are no federal rules regulating when it’s too hot to work, even though thousands of heat-related injuries and dozens of deaths are reported across the U.S. every year.
In 2020, after the heat-related death of 16-year-old football player Zachary Martin-Polsenberg in 2017, Florida lawmakers unanimously passed a law requiring schools to protect student-athletes from heat illness.
She and her colleagues at the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a farmworker organization based in south Florida, have developed a community-led effort called the Fair Food Program.
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