Will Republicans in Congress Torch OSHA’s Heat Standard?

Workers around the country experienced brutal heat this summer, with July the hottest month on record. It’s creating a safety crisis on the job, as workers report severe nausea, dizziness, exhaustion, and worse.

The heat is making members “dread going to work and fear for their health,” said Nicole Hernandez-Hammer, Director of Climate and Environmental Justice for the Service Employees (SEIU). “Some have had to be hospitalized for heat stroke symptoms while employers denied medical help.”

But U.S. employers still face no national heat safety regulation. And if Republicans in Congress get their way, they never will.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) started developing a heat standard in 2021 and proposed a draft in 2024, but now Republicans want to pass a law—with the Orwellian name “Heat Workforce Standards Act”—that will stop OSHA from creating or enforcing a national heat safety standard.

“Workers know what keeps people safe,” said Jessica Martinez, executive director of the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health (COSH): “access to water, rest, and shade; effective training and emergency plans; protection from retaliation; and strong standards that employers are required to follow.”

But as it stands, she said, “every day, workers are forced to choose between their health and their paycheck.”

REGULATIONS WORK

The good news is that where workers have fought for and won heat safety regulations, they work, especially when workers are in a union and can enforce their rights to rest breaks, cool liquids, air-conditioned vehicles, and areas to cool off in.

Safety experts estimate that a national heat standard could prevent 50,000 heat-related injuries and illnesses a year. A Health Affairs study showed that California’s heat regulations halved heat deaths once it was revised and enforced starting in 2015.

Between 500 and 2,000 U.S. workers die from heat stress every year, and this may be an undercount because there is no requirement to report heat illnesses. Additional injuries and deaths come from accidents when workers are affected by extreme heat.

“It drains your brain. It slows your cognitive function,” Phoenix airport worker Linda Ressler told the New York Times.

Ressler is an SEIU member who cleans plane cabins at Sky Harbor airport in Phoenix. When passengers board, the plane is nice and cool, but when Ressler and her co-workers enter to clean planes after their last flight of the day, the air conditioning is off, no air is circulating, and cabin temperatures can get close to 100 degrees. Ressler lost consciousness one night while wiping down a tray table.

Phoenix is the hottest city in the U.S., and the airport tarmac bakes in the sun, adding 10 to 20 degrees. UNITE HERE members are out on that tarmac delivering food to the planes. Workers say the floorboards of the trucks get like hotplates.

Making things worse, their employer, LSG Sky Chefs, is notorious for disabling the AC that comes standard with the trucks, in order to save on fuel costs.

“It’s a very common thing that we see in many other locations as well, that these trucks just don't have functioning AC,” said Victoria Stahl, who works for UNITE HERE Local 11 in Phoenix. When I talked to her at 9 a.m., it was already 100 degrees.

HIT A WALL

One summer Christopher Mays was driving back to the warehouse after servicing aircraft in one of the non-air-conditioned LSG Sky Chefs trucks. “I felt my body just tense up and I passed out. I went to stop the truck but I couldn’t, and I hit a wall,” he said.

Co-workers pulled him out of the cab. “And then all I heard was the ambulances, and them trying to wake me up.” He was hospitalized and was able to return to work three days later. He told the union he thought cab air conditioning would have prevented the incident.

In 2024, SEIU and UNITE HERE members organized to push the city of Phoenix, which owns the airport, to put language requiring a heat plan with protections in any contracts it signs with airport employers. Two other Arizona cities, Tucson and Tempe, have enacted similar requirements.

The language they won is strong. Employers have to make a heat plan and post it where workers can see it, and it has to guarantee breaks to cool down, free cool clean water, and a cool place to rest. The plan must also include training and acclimatization for new or returning workers. It also required AC in all vehicle cabs by May 1, 2025.

Enforcement was another matter. By last August, after the deadline, LSG Sky Chefs still didn’t have AC in many of its trucks. UNITE HERE Local 11 activist and 28-year airport worker Filiberto Lares said he was scared of retaliation, but he spoke up about it.

Managers soon suspended him on a pretext, the union said. His co-workers jumped into action, picketing at the airport and protesting to the city. They got him back his job, and the incident spurred the city to beef up whistleblower protections. Now employers have to post a phone number for workers to report violations, their heat plans have to promise no retaliation, and violators will be barred from contracts with the city for a year.

This summer, all the trucks have AC, Stahl said.

HEAT WALKOUT

Still, the measures only cover companies operating in Phoenix under city contracts. Vanessa Martinez works as a cook for Aramark at a Panda Express at Arizona State University downtown. The AC wasn’t working, and during a heat wave in March, when outdoor temperatures hovered around 105 degrees, “it was just ridiculously hot in the kitchen,” she said. “I ended up in the emergency room because I was pretty dehydrated.”

Martinez, a shop steward in Local 11, said her co-workers were regularly affected: “Some of us would go into work one day and then be out for two others because someone had a bit of a heat stroke or they had a migraine or they were dizzy or they were throwing up.” (Headaches, dizziness, and nausea are classic heat illness symptoms.)

When the workers confronted their managers, “they said it wasn't their fault, that they were doing the best that they could, that the situation was out of their hands,” she said.

“So I told my co-workers, well, we have to do something about it and it's got to be big if they're going to listen to us.” One afternoon 9 out of 12 people on shift walked out and set up a picket line outside the store.

Management scrambled and provided cooling towels and more fans. The workers won their demand to take as many heat-related breaks as necessary, and if workers get sick from the heat they can leave. They can also call in sick the next day with no consequence.

Representatives from Arizona’s Department of Occupational Safety and Health interviewed the workers. “But [they] basically told us that [Aramark wasn’t] breaking any law, so it was technically not illegal for us to work under those conditions,” said Martinez.

An OSHA heat standard would allow inspectors to take concrete steps when it is violated. With no specific standard, inspectors could fall back on the “general duty” clause which requires employers to provide a workplace “free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm.” But it’s a weak tool.

OSHA’s main power to change things is by setting specific standards, argued former OSHA head David Michaels. “When the agency issues a new rule, most employers try to comply,” he wrote in 2023. “OSHA standards change conditions at hundreds or sometimes thousands of workplaces, often very quickly. Inspections are there to send a reminder… but most employers comply voluntarily.”

After the heat strike at Panda Express, Aramark management finally provided portable AC units, though it’s still quite hot in the kitchen, Martinez said.

Elected officials got involved, and Martinez and other union workers who hope to see a statewide Arizona heat standard met with the governor. The meeting included members of the Farm Workers, Iron Workers, Machinists, and SEIU.

STATE BY STATE?

But it may be a long haul. State standards generate fierce opposition from employers. Only California, Oregon, and Maryland have state heat standards for all workers. Colorado’s standard only covers agricultural workers, and Minnesota’s only covers indoor workers.

In Texas and Florida, the state legislatures have banned cities and counties from enacting their own heat safety regulations. Texas passed a measure in June 2023 that reversed minimal regulations in Dallas and Austin that had required construction employers to provide 10-minute water and shade breaks every four hours.

Employers claimed “a burdensome compliance requirement” if local requirements varied from federal and state rules. But Texas has no heat safety requirement to conflict with. The local patchwork is happening precisely because a federal standard has been delayed by industry objections, and now is in danger of being crushed by the Republican-controlled Congress.

A national OSHA heat standard would be a vital tool for workers, and the move by Congress to put it out of reach is outraging unions and health and safety advocates. “Workplace safety protections must be based on the hazards workers face, not political agendas or changes in administration,” wrote National COSH in August.

Martinez, in Phoenix, said that when she and her co-workers walked out, “it kind of bonded us up and it reminded us, we’re people. We’re human beings. We deserve to work somewhere where we’re comfortable and we’re happy.”

For heat resources, check out National COSH and its Fired Up! Workers for Heat Justice campaign.