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Miami-Dade County commissioners rejected a bill on Tuesday that would have created the first county-level workplace heat protections in the United States. The defeat for local labor groups signals how difficult it will be to protect workers from increasingly dangerous temperatures in the absence of federal rules.

As climate change ratchets up global temperatures, most of the roughly 32 million people who work outdoors in the United States are <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/07/14/heat-workers-osha-protections/" target=_blank>not protected by any workplace heat safety regulations</a>.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has published voluntary guidelines on heat safety, but these are not enforceable. Only three states — California, Washington and Oregon — require companies to give outdoor workers breaks to cool down on hot days. No states in the South, where workplace heat deaths are most common, have created their own heat safety rules.

The Miami-Dade ordinance offered an opportunity to break this impasse, and to pave the way for similar rules across the country.

This summer smashed heat records <a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/environment/climate-change/article277743448.html" target=_blank>in Miami-Dade County</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2023/09/06/hottest-summer-record-extreme-heat/" target=_blank>for the entire planet</a>. As temperatures rise in summers to come, scientists and health-care researchers predict that record-breaking heat and workplace deaths will become more common.

“The climate crisis will lead to more workers in more industries being exposed to extreme heat,” said David Michaels, an epidemiology professor at George Washington University. “Local ordinances like the one being considered in Miami-Dade are of great importance and are likely to save lives.”

Eva Marie Uzcategui

The proposed rules in Miami-Dade would have been among the strictest in the country. They would have required construction and agriculture companies to train their workers to recognize and respond to signs of heat illness and, on hot days, to give workers clean water, a 10-minute break every two hours and a shaded area to cool down. Companies that failed to follow the rules would have faced fines of up to $2,000 per violation.

But on Tuesday, commissioners raised concerns about the cost of enforcing the rules, the likelihood that Florida’s state legislature would preempt the measure and the financial impact the proposed fines would have on farms and construction companies. “This ordinance could potentially kill industry,” commissioner Danielle Cohen Higgins said.

After six of the 10 present commissioners voiced their objections, the bill’s co-sponsors moved to defer the final vote until March rather than face a flat-out defeat. But there’s no indication that any changes to the bill — which had already been <a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/environment/climate-change/article279745304.html" target=_blank>watered down by industry lobbyists</a> — can win over skeptical commissioners. “I don’t want to give false expectations to my colleagues that deferring this item and bringing it back … would be any different,” commissioner Juan Carlos Bermudez said.

Before Tuesday’s defeat, labor groups said Miami-Dade County’s rules could be a model for local governments across the country to follow as they wait for OSHA to create an enforceable federal heat standard. The Labor Department started that rulemaking process in 2021, but the rules could take years to finish — if they ever take effect at all.

“Counties across the country are looking to Miami-Dade as an example of what government can do locally,” said Oscar Londoño, co-executive director of WeCount, a worker advocacy group lobbying for the local heat ordinance. “We can’t wait for the federal government to take action.”

But pressure from construction and agriculture industry groups, concerned about the red tape the ordinance would create, sealed the bill’s fate.

“Its anti-business sentiment quite frankly sends a message to everyone in the county and the rest of the country that Miami does not want businesses to survive, much less thrive," said Arianna Cabrera de Oña, chief people officer for Costa Farms, which cultivates 5,000 acres across Florida and the Carolinas.

It’s hard to quantify the toll heat takes on U.S. workers. According to official records from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 815 workers died and 70,000 more were seriously injured by heat stress between 1992 and 2017.

But health researchers — <a href="https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/eAgendaViewRule?pubId=202104&RIN=1218-AD39" target=_blank>and the Labor Department</a> — say those numbers are likely an undercount. “There’s no question there are many people who die from heat or are affected by heat where the fatality or the illness case is never reported or recorded as heat-related,” said Michaels, who was OSHA administrator from 2009 to 2017.

Heat also contributes indirectly to heart attacks, kidney failure, falls and machine accidents — causes of death and injury that often aren’t officially recorded as heat-related. A 2021 analysis from the German nonprofit IZA Institute of Labor Economics found that higher temperatures are correlated with about <a href="https://docs.iza.org/dp14560.pdf" target=_blank>20,000 workplace injuries</a> in California each year.

“Workers are not disposable, so they need urgent protections … in particular in areas such as Miami-Dade where 1 in 4 workers work outdoors,” said Jessica Martinez, co-executive director of the National Council of Occupational Safety and Health, a worker advocacy group affiliated with WeCount. Data from the Union of Concerned Scientists shows that <a href="https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/0983100fa18744fc97bd477d9879a9f8/" target=_blank>26 percent of the county’s workforce</a>, or more than 300,000 people, work outdoors.

But heat’s impact isn’t limited to the steamy subtropics of South Florida. “The reality is, every county in America needs to worry about it at least part of the year,” said Douglas Casa, head of the University of Connecticut’s Korey Stringer Institute, which publishes research on heat illness among workers and athletes.

Worker advocates say the best solution would be for OSHA to set one federal standard to create basic heat regulations for all U.S. workplaces.

<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/candidates/joe-biden-2024/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">President Biden</a> directed the federal agency to do just that in 2021. But the rulemaking process will drag on for years — and may collapse if Biden loses his reelection bid next year.

“As a policy, Republican administrations in recent decades have not issued any health standards,” said Michaels. “So we can expect that if the next administration is led by a Republican president, we will not see a heat standard for the entire period of that administration.”

“As part of the standards development process, the agency held Small Business Advocacy Review Panel meetings in September to gather views on the potential effects of a heat standard on small businesses," an OSHA spokesperson wrote in an email. "OSHA is currently reviewing comments received during the panel meetings.”

In the absence of federal rules, several states have passed their own. California, Washington and Oregon have standards that cover all outdoor workers. Colorado has rules that apply only to farmworkers. Minnesota created a heat standard for indoor workers in factories and warehouses.

But most worker heat deaths happen outside those states, according to OSHA data. They’re concentrated in the South, where Republican state legislatures have rejected heat regulations. Florida lawmakers have killed a bill that would create a state heat standard <a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/environment/climate-change/article275696926.html" target=_blank>three years in a row</a>.

“In a lot of states across the country, there is no political path to passing a statewide standard, so what we’re doing in Miami-Dade can be an example for cities across the country to take local action to protect their workers,” said Marleine Bastien, a Miami-Dade County commissioner and co-sponsor of the proposed heat ordinance, before the vote.

But state lawmakers can strike down local rules.

In May, Texas state legislators <a href="https://capitol.texas.gov/BillLookup/History.aspx?LegSess=88R&amp;Bill=HB2127" target="_blank">passed a preemption law</a> that nullifies a broad swath of local ordinances, including heat laws passed by city governments in Austin and Dallas, which required construction companies to give workers 10-minute breaks every four hours under $500 penalties. A district court judge ruled the state preemption law unconstitutional, but it <a href="https://www.tpr.org/government-politics/2023-09-05/death-star-law-takes-effect-on-schedule-following-the-states-appeal-of-a-lower-court-ruling" target="_blank">took effect anyway</a> on Sept. 1 while the state appeals the decision.

That month, Florida state legislators <a href="https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2023/170" target=_blank>passed a law</a> that allows businesses to sue local governments over any ordinance they deem “arbitrary or unreasonable.” If a business sues, the local government must immediately stop enforcing the ordinance while the case plays out in court. The municipality must pay up to $50,000 in attorneys fees and repeal the law if it loses the lawsuit.

The debate in Miami-Dade mirrors industry pushback against heat standards across the United States. “It is a microcosm of what we expect nationally,” said Martinez. “Industry is always lobbying for less red tape around issues of worker safety. … That’s the reality of why a heat standard has taken so long to move forward.”

Before the final vote, Kionne McGhee, a Miami-Dade County commissioner and co-sponsor of the heat ordinance, vowed that the fate of the bill would be decided on Tuesday.

“There is no intent to defer this item any longer,” McGhee said. “If it means we have to sit in that chamber for 10 to 15 hours in a marathon, we’re going to go in there and get this right.”

But shortly after McGhee and Bastien introduced the bill, six commissioners — a majority of those present — said they planned to vote no. Bastien quickly moved to defer the vote and McGhee assented. “I know how to count,” he said.

Northwestern University, BS in Journalism

Nicolás Rivero joined The Washington Post as a climate solutions reporter in 2023. Previously, he covered climate change for the Miami Herald and Quartz.

Nicolás Rivero

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Miami-Dade County mulls the strictest workplace heat rules in the U.S.

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Miami-Dade County Commissioners Will Vote On A Workplace Heat Safety Bill On November 7.

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Eva Marie Uzcategui for The Washington Post 

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An effort to create the strictest workplace heat rules in the U.S. failed