2 governors confronting extreme heat take opposite approaches to safety rules
LOS ANGELES — In California, employers will soon have to provide water and air conditioned areas for workers when temperatures inside warehouses rise above 82 degrees. When it goes above 87, workers will get shorter shifts and personal cooling fans.
In Florida, when a 95-degree sun bears down on farmworkers, local governments are actually prohibited from making employers supply water or a break in the shade.
The split on heat-related labor protections tracks with the scorched-earth feud between the states' Democratic and Republican governors, Gavin Newsom and Ron DeSantis. This divide on labor protections joins a wide range of differences between blue and red states on basic rights including abortion access, gun regulation and environmental protections. It’s also a reflection of the power dynamics in the coastal states: California is staunchly pro-labor, and Florida is business-dominant.
“You can look at safety standards in each state, whether it's heat standards or others, and it'll track with how union-dense those states are,” said Lorena Gonzalez, head of the California Labor Federation. “Workers don’t have the same rights in Florida that they have in California.”
The divergent heat rules are emblematic of a political divide that will only deepen if former President Donald Trump wins reelection, emboldening industry interests over union priorities across the states. The differing approaches are unfolding at a time when heat-related deaths have increased by 1,000 percent in places like Phoenix over the past decade. Florida and California are among the states with the highest number of heat-related fatalities.
As climate change turbocharges heat waves across the country, policies to both reduce carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and help people adapt to heat could suffer a setback under a Republican White House.
On Tuesday, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration proposed long-awaited heat regulations for indoor and outdoor workplaces, but they won’t be final until at least 2026, midway through what could be Trump’s second term. OSHA submitted its draft guidelines in June to the White House’s regulatory clearinghouse, but any rule that comes before the election could be overturned by the Congressional Review Act if Republicans retake control of the House in November. The rules are also expected to face legal challenges in front of judges newly empowered by the Supreme Court to be skeptical of agency actions.
Labor leaders and workers' advocates say that’s a reason for states to set their own rules.
“We wanted to make sure we have the best protections possible for workers here, no matter what happens at the federal level,” said Tim Shadix, legal director at the Warehouse Worker Resource Center, who advocated for the California rule.
While about half the states in the country have workplace safety plans, only a handful have specific protections related to heat. In 2005, California became the first state to pass outdoor heat rules requiring companies to provide shade, water and rest when temperatures exceed 95 degrees. Since then, Colorado, Oregon and Washington have followed.
But Minnesota and Oregon got there first on indoor heat rules. California blew through its 2019 deadline to set up standards, established by law in 2016, partially due to Covid.
Florida, along with many other states including those in the southeast that see some of the nation’s highest temperatures, doesn’t have its own state heat plan or Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
Many in the Sunshine State believe it should be individual employers who set tailored rules for their workers — rather than a one-size-fits-all government approach.
DeSantis in April approved legislation that blocks local governments from requiring employers to meet heat protection standards.
"It really wasn't anything that was coming from me. There was a lot of concern coming out of one county, Miami-Dade," DeSantis said. "I've not seen that be an issue through to the rest of the parts of the state."
Agriculture groups and building contractors supported the legislation, which resulted from Miami-Dade County in 2023 proposing an ordinance requiring employers to provide water and shade to workers when the heat index exceeds 90 degrees.
State Sen. Jay Trumbull, a Panama City Republican who runs an air conditioner company, introduced a version of the bill that DeSantis later signed. He told a Senate committee hearing earlier this year he doesn't think government should "tell a private business how they should act."
"There are lots of times I have to tell a customer, 'We cannot do this today — it's too hot. We'll be back in the morning,'" he said. "The reality is the employer should be making those determinations."
Until Tuesday's proposed standards, OSHA's efforts to protect workers from heat were limited to a general duty clause that requires employers to keep workers safe from “recognized hazards.” OSHA can issue citations under those standards, but such citations are rare and are often issued only after workers have died of heat exposure.
Supporters of the Florida bill have said OSHA guidelines are sufficient to protect those in the Sunshine State and other areas.
Carol Bowen, chief lobbyist for the Associated Builders & Contractors of Florida, said having different standards in each of Florida's 67 counties or more than 400 cities "causes confusion and uncertainty, and that doesn't benefit anyone."
"I do think there is a mischaracterization [that] there isn't a standard," Bowen told POLITICO. "There is one — we are bound by OSHA. ... We have simply said that should be THE standard statewide."
But like DeSantis in Florida, Newsom did not make a public display of backing the heat regulations that green-lighted recently in his home state.
Newsom didn’t immediately embrace the indoor heat rule that California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health passed in June. Two months prior to the final rulemaking, his administration pulled the item from an agency board vote citing concerns about costs to the state’s prison system, estimated at billions of dollars.
The agency responded by carving out prison workers, along with first responders who protect property, like police and firefighters, from the rule. The Newsom administration then demoted the CalOSHA board chair and removed a board member who spoke out against the last-minute change. On July 21, the agency passed the rule.
“For almost two decades California has been protecting outdoor workers with critical heat protections — and now we continue to move in the right direction with new protections for indoor workers,” said Newsom spokesperson Omar Rodriguez. “If approved, California will be leading the way as one of a few states to have both indoor and outdoor heat protections in place.”
Employer representatives complained about the state’s kowtowing to concerns about costs and compliance from prisons and not other industries. Labor representatives said the rule, though it excludes some workers, comes not a moment too soon, and the board called on the Office of Administrative Law to expedite it so that it could go into effect in August.
“The situation is that people are going to die,” said former CalOSHA board member Laura Stock, whom the administration removed from her post in early June. “Waiting for the slow wheels of bureaucracy to turn at the federal level, when you could actually make a difference at a local level and save lives, it feels like that's what you should be doing.”