Here are some of the most common questions I’ve heard about the proposed heat standard.
It’s hot everywhere. Why do workers need a special heat standard—and why now?
If you’re mowing your own lawn or cleaning out your attic on a hot summer day, no one can keep you from taking a break, getting a glass of water, or even deferring your task to cooler day. In the current economy, however, too many workers are denied these basic safeguards on the job.
OSHA found in a review of more than 200 cases of heat-related workplace deaths that employers frequently failed to provide protections such as water, shade, timely medical care, and time for new workers to get used to the heat. Some employers actively prevented overheated workers from taking rest breaks. Others left sick workers alone and unsupervised to perish from preventable causes.
Lots of employers do the right thing, of course. But as OSHA puts it: “The existence of adequate protections in some workplaces speaks to the feasibility of the standard, not necessarily to the lack of need.”
As to the question of “why now,” the answer is partly climate change. Heat is an old, old problem for workers, and experts in the Nixon administration recommended federal heat standards more than 50 years ago. Workers have been waiting ever since. In the meantime, every season has gotten warmer and heat waves have gotten longer and more intense.
Who will and won’t be covered by the heat standard?
OSHA estimates that the current proposal would protect about 36 million outdoor and indoor workers. This includes employees at hot workplaces as varied as construction sites, factories, restaurants, warehouses, car repair garages, and even elder care facilities.
The heat standard would fully apply to most private sector industries and the U.S. Postal Service. Although most other federal agencies would likewise have to comply, OSHA has limited enforcement powers in agencies outside of the Postal Service.
Many state and local government workers, however, will be left out—including in most of the hot states in the Heartland and the Southeast—even if they’re engaged in waste management, landscaping, or other strenuous outdoor jobs. That’s because federal worker health and safety standards don’t apply to state and local governments unless they are in states with OSHA-approved plans.
The current draft also exempts a few classes of workers who are regularly exposed to heat, such as firefighting organizations. And because of decades of marginalization by previous pro-business administrations and members of Congress, plenty of other highly heat-vulnerable workers such as incarcerated workers, workers on small farms, and domestic workers will fall through the cracks.
