When my grandmother first came to this country from Cuba in the 1970s, she was only able to find work farming radishes in rural Florida. It was backbreaking, difficult labor, but it was a living.
When I think of her—or anyone—farming in today’s climate conditions, it’s hard to imagine. Especially knowing extreme heat is now the leading weather-related cause of death in the United States.
Currently, there’s no federal standard from the Occupational Safety and Health Association (OSHA) that protects workers from heat stress hazards. This makes no sense—and needs to change.
Tell OSHA: Protect Workers From Extreme Heat
Outdoor work and warehouse work can be extremely dangerous: every day, workers put their lives at risk to make a living for their families and provide our food, mail, and other essential goods and services.
OSHA new proposed protections—Heat Injury and Illness Prevention in Outdoor and Indoor Work Settings—would protect workers like my grandmother from heat injury and illness. These protections would apply to all work settings where OSHA has jurisdiction and would require employers to create a plan to evaluate and manage heat hazards in their workplaces.
The new standards would not only protect outdoor and warehouse workers.
- They would provide safeguards for Black and Latino workers who are disproportionately represented in the outdoor workforce.
- Pregnant workers, older workers, and workers with certain preexisting health conditions also face elevated risk from extreme heat and would benefit from the new standard.
OSHA’s proposed new standard is an important step in the right direction—and they are only accepting public comments for a short time.
So join Moms today in telling OSHA that we want our workers to be protected from dangerous heat.