In America: California’s New Heat Standards For Workers Could Become Nationwide Standards
Anees Ur Rehman
The labor force fuels the country and the economy in every climate. The scolding heat, however, can prove to be too much. In California, summer temperatures can reach dangerous highs for employees. Risks such as physical injuries, illnesses, and worse can happen from exposure to extreme heat in work environments.
What protections are there for workers in such conditions? What impact does temperature regulations have on labor industries? In 2024, California established standards for “Heat Illness Prevention” workplaces. In both indoor and outdoor environments, employers are required to follow California Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (Cal/OSHA) standards providing protective measures that limit the effect heat has on their employees. While labor groups celebrate these protections, industries dissent this legislation and are considering legal action to challenge it.
California’s Heat Illness Prevention Standards
Cal/OSHA’s “Heat Illness Prevention Standards” require workplaces to create and maintain effective written prevention plans with “stricter employer safeguards” to ensure employee safety in hot work environments. These plans require workplaces to provide employees cooling breaks, shaded rest areas, and training for handling heat risks and emergencies. For indoor workplaces, heat illness prevention plans require safeguards to be used when temperatures reach 82°F or hotter. In outdoor workplaces, the standards require safeguards beginning at 80°F and additional high-heat procedures at 95°F.
Why California's Standards Could Be Used Nationwide
While California isn’t the only state to implement indoor and outdoor mandated heat exposure protections, its standards are unique because it provides a comprehensive model that could be used nationwide. Not even Federal OSHA relies on these kinds of standards. Federal OSHA instead generally uses a “National Emphasis Program” that focuses only on inspecting hazardous/high-risk industries. Other methods used include Site-Specific Targeting (SST) Programs, Unprogrammed Inspections, and Local Emphasis Programs (LEPs). Because of the efficiency in Cal/OSHA’s heat standards, they could be beneficial to adopt federally.
The implications of California’s heat standards suggest positive impacts for the well-being of workers and the economy. By providing protection to workers, industries can increase worker productivity by reducing heat-related illnesses and injuries and lowering healthcare costs. OSHA has proposed a federal standard familiar to California’s. OSHA’s regulatory impact analysis suggests that using additional prevention measures and trigger systems, like California's heat standards, would create billions of dollars in revenue, outweighing costs. The proposed federal standards create an effort to reduce worker deaths and injuries caused by extreme heat. OSHA’s analysis estimated the new heat illness prevention standards could reduce hundreds of heat-related deaths and over 16,000 heat-related injuries that occur in the workplace every year.
Industries Pushback Against Cal/OSHA’s Standards
As workers benefit from the installation of these heat standards, some business groups have come out against California’s mandate of the new standards. The state implementing indoor heat standards has created upfront costs for businesses. This includes costs related to infrastructure, personal protective equipment, training, planning, and monitoring. Consequences for not following these standards can result in legal penalties for violations and preventable heat-related injuries and illnesses that would require workers being compensated.
At the beginning of this year, the Department of Industrial Relations’ Division of Cal/OSHA increased maximum penalties for violations of these heat safety standards. Classifications of penalties include regulatory, general, willful, and repeat offenses. Maximum penalties for violations include: regulatory or general violations at $16,285, willful violations at $11,632, serious violations at $25,000, and for repeat violations, $162,851.
There are greater concerns from farming and outdoor labor industries in California. Several agricultural and business groups, like the California Chamber of Commerce and the California Farm Bureau, have voiced their disapproval for the mandated standards. Specifically, the feasibility of implementing these standards in farming and outdoor environments has made businesses and organizations particularly upset. There has also been questioning of Cal/OSHA's ability to properly enforce these regulations. United Farm Workers Union claims Cal/OSHA is ill-equipped to handle these standards due to management style and being understaffed. Frustrations with the standards could lead to litigation.
Hospitals and the Food Industry have emphasized consequences in implementing these regulations as well. The California Hospital Association has requested exceptions to the regulations in specialized medical facilities that require certain temperatures for treatments, as seen in burn units. Restaurants and other food businesses have supported this rationale, as preserving food at certain temperatures is a necessity for food safety. Adjusting food equipment to the standards’ required temperatures could violate existing food health safety codes.
The regulations can affect property owners who lease to businesses in California. There's a possibility that both businesses and leasing agreements will have to abide by the heating standards. For businesses who lease their space, they may not have control over the property’s infrastructure, or whether it abides by the mandated heat standards.
While California’s heat standards provide structure that could be used nationally and could be an opportunity for businesses to profit and provide safer environments for their workers, concerns are raised for the application of these standards when used in different industries work environments.
