Florida lawmakers propose safeguards after Times report on worker heat deaths

Yahoo

07-02-2025

Florida Democratic lawmakers are proposing statewide heat protections for outdoor workers, months after a Tampa Bay Times investigation found far more Florida workers have died of heat illness than authorities know.
'It's an atrocity, and it's a tragedy,' said Sen. Darryl Rouson, D-St. Petersburg, who filed the bill in the Senate on Wednesday. 'There's a need to put these types of regulations in place.' Four other Democrats filed a companion bill in the House.
Florida is one of the nation's hottest states, with punishing humidity that can make it difficult for the body to cool down. Currently, neither the state nor federal government has heat safety standards to protect workers from high temperatures — despite Florida requiring similar safeguards for high school athletes.
Some of the legislators co-sponsoring the heat protection bill are also calling for a repeal of a law passed last year that blocks local governments from creating their own oversight for workers exposed to heat.
House Minority Leader Fentrice Driskell, D-Tampa, is also in favor of repealing the preemption law.
'This is an issue that has been brought into sharp relief by the number of deaths — both that are known, and now these that have been unreported,' Driskell said. 'This lax regulatory environment is empowering employers to try to get away with this, and to not do the right thing and protect their workers.'
Proponents of the ban at the time said businesses and federal regulators could keep laborers safe. But the Times found authorities have missed more than half of all heat-related deaths of workers statewide in the last decade — because Florida companies failed to report them as required by law.
Neither Gov. Ron DeSantis, who signed the prohibition measure last April, nor its Republican sponsors responded to requests for comment.
No lawmaker has yet filed a bill to repeal the 2024 legislation.
'The federal government is used as an excuse,' Rouson said. 'I understand that employers want a standard and don't want it to change from location to location — making hodgepodge regulation — and this is why we need a statewide standard.'
The proposed heat safety bill would create a program to train businesses and outdoor employees on signs of heat illness. It would require employers to provide water, as well as shade and 10-minute breaks every two hours on hot days.
The push for statewide protections is not new. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have sponsored bills with nearly identical language for years, the Times previously reported, with little traction.
But Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando, said the Times' findings 'emphasized the urgency' of this year's legislation.
'I think that this issue often gets tied up in the interests of big businesses, and they brand it as burdensome,' said Eskamani, who is co-sponsoring the House bill filed by Rep. Michael Gottlieb, D-Davie. 'I would argue that you save money when you have a healthy work environment, because you avoid things like worker's comp, you avoid litigation.'
Extreme heat is more deadly than any other natural disaster plaguing the U.S., killing more people annually than hurricanes, tornadoes and floods combined.
Employers are supposed to notify the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which oversees worker safety, about employee deaths within hours. But the Times identified 19 additional heat-related deaths that were kept from the agency, more than doubling the official number of worker heat fatalities in Florida.
Many were young. At least a handful died during their first week on the job, unaccustomed to Florida's stifling heat and humidity. Roughly half were immigrants.