Florida Ban on Protections for Outdoor Workers Goes Into Effect Amid Record Heat

The same interests lobbying against heat protection for workers also pushed to roll back child labor protections

Florida just saw the hottest May ever recorded in Miami — the heat index was “off the charts” according to the Miami Herald. The water temperature at Virginia Key set record temperatures for 12 consecutive days, and in late May it was as warm as it would normally be in late July. It seems like it will be a long summer in Florida. By May 30, there were already 12 daily heat index records set in 2024, according to meteorologist Brian McNoldy.

It’s “business as usual” for the state’s outdoor workers, though. Crops need to be harvested and construction projects need to be built despite the oppressive and potentially deadly heat, which has killed farmworkers like Efraín López García, a 29-year-old who complained while on the job of having a headache and experiencing dehydration symptoms.

The situation can be tolerable for workers who toil within enclosed spaces blessed by air conditioning. But for those who labor outdoors, the Florida legislature guaranteed that their misery would continue and worsen. Lawmakers recently passed HB 433, a broad preemption law that blocks local municipalities from enacting predictive scheduling laws, which require employers to provide work schedules to employees in advance; living wage standards; and, perhaps most shockingly, prohibits any heat stress protections for outdoor workers.

The story of how this heat stress preemption law came to be has its roots in Miami-Dade County. WeCount, a group that organizes laborers and farmworkers in the city of Homestead, led a coalition that came close to convincing the county commission to pass some basic heat stress protections for outdoor workers. Under the banner of “water, rest and shade,” hundreds of workers organized to require employers in the agriculture and construction industries to provide some basic protections or suffer financial penalties, even potentially being blocked from county contracts after repeated offenses. In its original form, the standard would have allowed workers a 10-minute paid rest and water break every two hours when the heat index reached 90 degrees Fahrenheit (90°F), although that was eventually raised to 95°F.