On Tuesday, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, released the draft text of a proposed rule on preventing heat injury and illness amongst the U.S. workers. If finalized, the proposed rule would become the nation’s first-ever federal regulation on heat stress in the workplace. The development comes at the start of a summer that’s already seen record-breaking heat, and days after OSHA announced tens of thousands of dollars in proposed penalties for a case involving a 41-year-old farmworker who died of heatstroke while working in Florida last year.

In a press briefing on Monday, a senior Biden administration official described the draft rule’s requirements as “common sense.”

“The purpose of this rule is simple,” said the official, who offered comments on the condition of anonymity. “It is to significantly reduce the number of worker-related deaths, injuries, and illnesses suffered by workers who are exposed to excessive heat and exposed to these risks while simply doing their jobs.”

The draft rule requires employers to implement heat injury and prevention plans that grant workers access to drinking water, shade, rest areas, and breaks once the heat index hits 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Employers would also have to develop an acclimatization plan to help new employees to become accustomed to working in extreme heat, and train supervisors and employees in how to identify heat illness. (Notably, three out of four worker fatalities that stem from heat-related illness happen on the first week of the job.) Once the heat index exceeds 90 degrees F, additional breaks and increased heat-illness symptom monitoring would also be required. The proposed rule includes a requirement that employers evaluate these plans for potential updates at least once a year.

These regulations would apply to all employers overseeing outdoor and indoor work where OSHA has jurisdiction, which includes most private-sector employers and workers in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., but doesn’t cover some workers at state and local government agencies, self-employed workers, or independent contractors. The draft rule also exempts workplaces where there is no reasonable expectation of exposure to the initial heat trigger, and indoor working conditions where temperatures are kept below the 80 degree F threshold. Furthermore, it excludes situations where employees are exposed to temperatures over the standard threshold for short periods of time, among other exceptions.

Advocates who have been fighting for national heat regulation for years are praising the move. Ligia Guallpa, executive director of the nonprofit Worker’s Justice Project, a New York City worker center for low-wage, immigrant workers, said her group “applauds” the proposed rule.

“The Biden administration is moving to protect the lives of workers,” said Amy Liebman, chief program officer at the nonprofit Migrant Clinicians Network, which aims to reduce health inequities among immigrant communities. “This effort is particularly critical as states such as Texas and Florida are not only failing to protect workers from the heat but pursuing legislation that will cause undue harm to workers.” Last year, Texas Governor Greg Abbott passed a law that blocked cities from enacting their own heat protections for workers. In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis signed a similar law into effect this past spring.

OSHA first announced that the agency would begin developing a federal heat stress rule in 2021, following a summer of record-breaking temperatures. Typically, the federal rulemaking process is fairly lengthy, and experts and organizers who spoke to Grist last month worried that the Biden administration would let the proposed heat regulation linger under review for another year or longer — at which point, depending on the outcome of the presidential election in November, the rule could be nullified by a new administration or a Republican-controlled Congress. But the surprise release of the proposed rule this week appears to signal a readiness from the Biden administration to advance the regulation, potentially with the goal of finalizing it before the end of the year.

Representative Greg Casar, a Democrat from Texas, said he feels certain, following a visit from a top OSHA official to his home state in June, that finalizing a federal heat standard is the agency’s top regulatory priority. “I think it’s clear that President Biden and his administration are responding to the climate crisis, are responding to what workers are asking for, and they’re expediting this because workers just can’t wait seven or eight years,” Casar said.

Experts expect that the OSHA rule could face legal challenges. “There are always technical quibbles,” said Michael Gerrard, the founder and faculty director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, “and sometimes, some courts will pick up on those quibbles.” Gerrard pointed to the recent Supreme Court decision to block the Environmental Protection Agency’s “Good Neighbor” rule, which regulated smog by taking aim at smokestack emissions, as an example of a successful legal challenge based on the argument that federal officials neglected to address public comments on the draft plan. Potentially, going forward, “people who want to challenge rules will take a look at the comments on the draft rule and complain if any of the comments wasn’t thoroughly responded to.”

The draft heat rule is now subject to a public comment period and a subsequent final review by the White House. Given the highly politicized nature of heat regulation, it is likely that OSHA will receive a considerable amount of comments on the proposed standard, which could potentially draw out the process of finalizing the regulation. A spokesperson from OSHA said the agency “cannot speculate” as to when the rule may be finalized, but that it was moving “swiftly and responsibly” to ensure workers have necessary protections.

“All workers deserve safety and an advocate for their rights,” said Guallpa. “We are heartened to see the federal government stepping up to require basic protections from extreme weather.”

This article originally appeared in Grist. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. 

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The United Auto Workers (UAW) strike began on September 15 at selected Detroit plants run by automakers General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis, and has since expanded in a bid for better wages, benefits, and job security for members.

But weeks of negotiation ensued after the Detroit Three said they could not afford to meet union demands because they needed to invest profits in the costly transition from gas-powered cars to electric vehicles, reports the Associated Press.

Push to Unionize EV Plant Workers

“Perhaps most important to the union is that it be allowed to represent workers at 10 electric vehicle battery factories, most of which are being built by joint ventures between automakers and South Korean battery makers,” AP adds. “The union wants those plants to receive top UAW wages. In part that’s because workers who now make components for internal combustion engines will need a place to work as the industry transitions to EVs.”

On October 6, the UAW announced the strike was working, after an unexpected concession by GM to allow workers at its joint venture battery plants to be covered by union contracts, Reuters reports. The union said it would hold off additional strikes against the Detroit Three, but on October 9, 4,000 unionized workers at Mack Trucks went on strike after a separate five-year deal was voted down. The total number of UAW members on strike now exceeds 30,000 across 22 states, the union says.

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Workers are taking a stand against the brutal conditions, using walkouts, strikes, and protests to call attention to the outsize danger the heat poses to the people who must work outdoors or in conditions where air conditioning isn’t available. The ongoing threat has taken the lives of people, from a construction worker in the Italian city of Lodi to farmworkers in Florida, and letter carriers in Texas.

The organizing efforts started in Greece, where workers in the tourism industry — which accounts for 20% of the country’s GDP — are chafing under the strain. Athens’s most famous archaeological site, the Acropolis, closed for a few days earlier this month, but even as the government reopened it, temperatures continued soaring to 111 degrees Fahrenheit. The Acropolis’s staff, which is unionized through the Panhellenic Union for the Guarding of Antiquities voted to strike during the hottest four hours of each day.

Workers are fed up in Italy, too. Bus drivers have threatened to bring Rome and Naples to a halt, citing oven-like heat and the lack of air conditioning in their vehicles.  Even the employees of a McDonald’s staged a walkout, also citing lack of A/C, which most of the country’s restaurant kitchens lack, according to the Italian General Confederation of Labor.

In the U.S., the heat has prompted strikes by Amazon delivery drivers, and Union of Southern Service Workers members in Atlanta rallied for relief after a Burger King refused to fix its broken air conditioning. Currently, the United States relies on employers to enforce heat safety guidelines, and many do not appear interested in doing so — some agricultural and construction companies even going so far as to actively oppose federal heat regulations. Some say it’s counterproductive to do so, as research shows that working under extreme heat yields diminishing returns – after a certain point, workers’ minds and bodies become impaired, and research has shown the cumulative impact of working in extreme heat is costing the U.S. billions in worker productivity.

OSHA started the rulemaking process for a workplace standard on heat exposure in 2021, but there’s still no firm rule in place. Calls for one have ramped up of late, and the Biden administration responded with the nation’s first-ever heat hazard alert and investments in more accurate weather forecasting, among other measures.

Labor organizations, though, are holding firm in their demand for stronger heat protections. Organizers and workers in Texas are particularly concerned that the state has taken a sharp and deadly turn. A new law strips cities of the right to maintain independent worker safety ordinances such as mandating breaks. The bill, which takes effect September 1, will leave many of those decisions to employers, and many workers don’t trust them to operate in good faith.

“As a single mother who depended on construction work for 20 years to run a household alone, I have witnessed how each summer becomes more perilous for my co-workers,” said Marisol Gayosso, a member of Workers Defense Project who lives in Dallas. “Workers are dying in 100-plus degree weather and the brutality of the climate crisis will only exasperate this reality.”

In response to the bill, organized labor and environmental groups, in concert with Texas House Rep. Greg Casar, rallied on July 25 on the front steps of the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. to demand a federal heat standard for U.S. workers.  The coalition included workers, members, and staff from United Farmworkers, the Texas AFL-CIO, the Sunrise Movement, and other organizations.

The event was preceded by a public letter, released on July 24 and signed by Casar and 110 colleagues. In it, House lawmakers called on the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to develop a federal safety standard for heat exposure, arguing that it would require employers and states to comply with safety measures like providing regular breaks and ample water and shade.

Casar, who was previously an organizer with the Workers Defense Project, billed the action as a “thirst strike,” refusing to drink water, eat, or take a break for the entire day.

Ana Gonzales, the Texas AFL-CIO’s deputy director of politics, says that union membership is what has enabled workers from continent to continent to stand up and walk out, but she fights for non-unionized workers, too.

“If you are part of a union,” she said, “you will get those breaks.  Those breaks are in your contract. But for those workers that don’t have unions, we will continue to find ways to protect them.”

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/extreme-heat/as-heat-strikes-so-do-workers/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

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When COVID struck and the malls shut down, more than 2,000 retail and fashion companies abruptly cancelled thousands of orders, many failing to pay even for those that had been completed. The small suppliers who produce some of the world’s best-known brands – The Gap, Nike, Primark, H&M and hundreds more – were forced to cut staff or even close their doors, leaving millions of workers struggling to feed their families.

At the best of times, garment workers, most of them based in Asia and primarily female, live precarious lives. They work up to 60 hours a week earning as little as $2 to $3 an hour while working at breakneck pace in often unsafe conditions.

In Bangladesh, India, Cambodia, Kenya and other centres of textile production, workers have protested to regain their lost wages. But social media, which often exposes power imbalances, may prove the most effective tool for recouping the money the workers are owed.

Enter Remake, a California-based group of millennial and Gen Z designers and activists dedicated to “making fashion a force for good.” Galvanized by research published by the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC) and Penn State’s Center for Global Workers’ Rights, Remake, along with a a global network of  labour unions and labour rights advocates emerged to demand that brands pay factories the billions they owe. Under the hashtag #PayUp, Remake used Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to shame the big companies that have greatly profited from their poorly paid global supply chains.

Never underestimate the power of fashionistas: by the fall, 273,000 people had signed Remake’s petition, and Adidas, H&M, The Gap, Lululemon, Ralph Lauren and Primark were among the 21 brands removed from Remake’s hit list, by promising to pay for cancelled and in-production orders in full, and in a timely manner. Remake estimates this effort will recoup US$22-billion worth of payments for overseas suppliers – about half the total bill it believes the retailers incurred.

In October, Penn State and WRC released an updated research brief, Unpaid Billions, documenting US$16.2 billion in cancelled orders and retroactive price reductions by garment brands and retailers, noting, “The result has been a dramatic loss of income and jobs for millions of garment workers.”

Among the companies still holding out as of November: Arcadia (which owns Topshop), The Children’s Place, JCPenney, Oscar de la Renta, Urban Outfitters and TJX, which owns Marshalls, Winners and HomeSense in Canada. (See sidebar below.)

How do such inequities happen? Apparel buyers used to fund new inventory using letters of credit, which guaranteed payment – without delays or further haggling – once the products were shipped. But The Wall Street Journal reports that big brands abandoned that practice over the last decade, “opting instead for an open-account system – essentially an honor system –where factories trust retailers to pay after shipment.” Factory owners had little choice but to go along.

“In the Covid-19 crisis, this skewed payment system allowed western brands to shore up their financial position by essentially robbing their developing country suppliers,” director of the WRC and co-author of the study, Scott Nova, told The Guardian.

Remake founder and CEO Ayesha Barenblat recently issued a campaign update:

“Missing from all of these fashion conversations of building back better post COVID-19 are workers whose wages and safety continues to be in a free fall. But if we have something to do with it, CEOs of fashion brands and the billionaires behind them, cannot just slip back into polite society after the devastation they have caused.”

Barenblat announced that Remake is launching the next phase of PayUp Fashion, demanding that brands go beyond just paying up and also commit to keeping workers safe, boosting wages and supporting much-needed laws and regulations that put workers at the center of a stronger, more equitably fashion industry.

As Barenblat told Vogue in the summer, #PayUp’s success “illustrates the power of activists and citizens coming together to hold the fashion industry accountable.” However, she adds, “we will not rest until the industry commits to liveable wages and social protections for garment makers so that never again will women who make our clothes be pushed to the brink of starvation.”

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