WICHITA, Kansas—Harold Schlechtweg, a former Directing Business Representative for Service Employees Local 513 in Wichita, Kansas, tells of the fate of a worker harmed by intense heat.
“Several years ago, one of my members was seriously injured by heat stroke,” Schlechtweg e-mailed in late November to the regulations comments section for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). “He worked 14 years without missing a day of work because of illness.
“He was visibly distressed at the end of one work day. But he came back and worked a full shift the next, on one of the hottest days of summer. He collapsed outside the door of his un-air-conditioned apartment and was taken to a hospital by ambulance.
“This was more than 25 years ago. He has been confined to a nursing home ever since. He was a vigorous, strong man in his 40s, reduced to a shell of what he was, confined to a wheel chair, hardly able to speak.
“After this terrible injury, the union fought to get him compensation, and since that day Wichita Parks Department trucks carry water barrels for those that work outside and frequent breaks are mandated on hot days. Supervisors are trained to notice signs of heat exhaustion and heat stroke.
“All workers need this protection, not just those in a union.”
OSHA plans to order employers to give it to them, proposing a mandatory heat protection rule. That rule is too late, however for Schlechtweg’s colleague—or for the 1,042 U.S. workers who died “due to occupational exposure to environmental heat from 1992-2022, with an average of 34 fatalities per year,” OSHA noted.
And from 2011-2020, workers suffered an average of 3,389 heat-caused injuries and illnesses every year. That doesn’t count injuries from slowed decision-making and dulled reactions, also caused by excessive heat, OSHA noted.
Preventing such illnesses, injuries and deaths was the point of the overwhelming majority of the 16,332 people who have written the agency so far, demanding it impose a specific standard mandating businesses which order their workers to toil in extreme heat craft and implement plans to protect their workers against the injuries and even deaths from extreme heat
From Amazon warehouses and agribusiness farms on down to small shops, those plans would include frequent rest breaks when the temperature rises above 80 degrees Fahrenheit indoors or outside and more protection when heat soars above 110. Bosses would have to provide clean water and time to drink it, shade, monitoring workers’ body temperatures and more. And they’d have to train workers in both how to protect themselves and what protection firms provide.
All that would help protect workers, unionized or not, exposed to high heat, say the Farmworkers, the Utility Workers—who also wrote to OSHA—the Steelworkers and the Service Employees and other unions. They’ve been pushing for such a specific standard for years.
Now, they’re going to get that standard…or will they?
OSHA sent the heat protection standard over to the White House for review just before Labor Day, and there it sat until December 2. OSHA put it out to the public with an original comment deadline of the end of this year, then extended it to January 15. Comments can be sent to www.regulations.gov OSHA-2021-0009.
That extension puts the fate of protecting workers from high heat and its threat in the hands of the incoming Republican Trump administration—and its corporate cronies. Their hate of federal rules in general, and OSHA in particular, is well-known and was strikingly obvious when Trump was in office before Democratic President Joe Biden. It didn’t issue a single rule and enforcement declined.
But OSHA is plowing ahead with its heat rule, which it wants to apply almost universally. Right now, preventing heat-related deaths and illnesses, and enforcement, come under OSHA’s “general duty clause,” a standard which says firms have “a general duty” to provide safe and healthy workplaces.
In practice, enforcing violations of the general duty clause has been difficult for years. And bosses contest it every step of the way, since fines, penalties and bad publicity when a worker dies or gets ill on the job cuts into profits and drives firms’ insurance and workers’ comp costs up.
“Heat is the leading cause of death among all weather-related phenomena in the United States. Excessive heat in the workplace can cause a number of adverse health effects, including heat stroke and even death, if not treated properly,” OSHA warned in unveiling the proposed anti-heat rule.
“Yet, there is currently no federal OSHA standard that regulates heat stress hazards in the workplace. Although several governmental and non-governmental organizations published regulations and guidance to help protect workers from heat hazards, OSHA believes a mandatory federal standard specific to heat-related injury and illness prevention is necessary to address the hazards posed by occupational exposure.
“A standard is reasonably necessary or appropriate…when a significant risk of material harm exists in the workplace and the standard would substantially reduce or eliminate that workplace risk.” But it can’t be impossible to meet, OSHA said. And it must be “technologically feasible when protective measures it requires already exist, when available technology can bring the protective measures into existence, or when that technology is reasonably likely to develop.”
Many writers cited facts and figures about how many workers—more than 36 million, most of them workers of color—“suffer from exposure to extreme temperatures at work,” as their e-mails said.
Besides utility workers, farm workers and warehouse workers, heat victims include “airport workers on the blazing tarmac or cleaning stifling cabins,” janitors cleaning office buildings after hours, restaurant kitchen workers, commercial laundry staffers, and health care workers.
“I currently represent about 3000 hard working ramp airline employees from the southeast of the USA as a safety chairman,” e-mailed one unnamed writer who’s from Transport Workers Local 568. “We operate a 24-hour operation. Our workers are and have been exposed to inhuman heat working conditions. We all have seen how hot our summers temperatures have gone, to levels never experienced before. Temperatures reaching about 112 degrees in average around aircraft. We conduct a hydration program 12 hours a day, with two vehicles serving our team continuously.” It works. “Let’s make sure all workers have the ability to be treated correctly when working in hot environment.”
Some writers added rising temperatures due to climate change as reasons for an OSHA standard.
“I am writing as a proud union member (UE Local 197) in support of the proposed standards,” Josh Stein e-mailed OSHA. “Heat kills, and kills every more people in ever more dire conditions every year, as the climate unravels. Workers in every sector will need new rights and protections as the climate crisis unfolds, and these regulations are an important step in that direction.”
“Please implement the proposed heat regulations. These standards becoming law are critical to protect the health and lives of farm workers and other workers who have no choice but to work in dangerous conditions,” Houston airline worker Sophia Vassilakidis emailed to OSHA.
“In recent years, record-high temperatures have been seen across the country. These extreme temperatures injure and kill workers each year. Farm workers are as much as 35 times more likely to be killed by heat than any other civilian occupation.
“Workers need enforceable protections so dangerous accidents never happen. Heat deaths are preventable tragedies. The solution isn’t complicated: Training, shade, cool water and paid rest breaks.
“I work for an airline at the airport in Houston, fortunately not on the ramp. My ramp coworkers, being unionized, are made aware of heat safety and risk and are provided with water and cooling areas, but still have a high rate of heat illness and collapse. Anyone who works in such conditions must be guaranteed the basics, union or no, or else it is nothing less than slave labor.”
“I work on an asphalt crew in Las Vegas,” an anonymous Las Vegas worker wrote. “We are union but the norm here is no breaks no lunch. The company I work for does provide water and does allow you to go to shade if needed. They will also send you home if you have to have a break. We were once told on a 115-degree day to find something to do while waiting on trucks because we were all sitting in the shade. We run out of cold water in a regular basis and if there are no trees we have no shade. Fifteen-minute breaks and a designated shade area would make a huge difference.
“Every summer I wonder if I’m going to live or die.”
“The federal rule OSHA proposes is a significant first step in protecting indoor and outdoor workers–training, rest breaks, shade, and water,” Schlechtweg of Wichita concluded. “I encourage you to resist efforts to weaken or compromise on the proposed standards. I urge you to ensure the final rule applies to ALL workers facing unsafe temperatures in their work environment. I urge you to act boldly and swiftly to implement the strongest possible heat standards–which will go a long way to protecting workers and saving lives.”
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