DeSantis signs bill ending push in Miami-Dade to pass worker heat protections
With the stroke of the governor’s pen, local governments in Florida are now blocked from requiring heat protections for outdoor workers, driving a stake through the heart of Miami-Dade County’s efforts to keep farmworkers and construction workers safe from extreme heat.
Gov. Ron DeSantis quietly signed the bill (HB 433) into law late Thursday night, along with a host of other small bills, despite a Democrat-led campaign for a veto.
The result: cities and counties in Florida can no longer mandate employers offer water, rest and shade to their outdoor employees on hot days.
The Republican-led pre-emption was sparked by Miami-Dade’s push for these protections, along with financial penalties if employers didn’t follow them. But even before the bill was drafted in November, lobbyists from the politically powerful real estate and agriculture industries successfully watered down the fledgling bill and derailed it. It officially died last month.
READ MORE: Miami-Dade’s push to protect outdoor workers dies after state ban. What’s next?
Lobbyists for those business interests, along with the politicians supporting the pre-emption, argued that new worker protections for one corner of the state would be too complicated for employers to follow, and said that the current rules do a good enough job of protecting employees.
In a Thursday night statement, Bill Herrle, Florida director of the National Federation of Independent Business, said the bill will help “create a stable environment where owners can grow their businesses.”
“Small business owners don’t have the time or the resources to navigate a confusing and contradictory array of local ordinances that go beyond [what] the state already mandates,” he wrote.
Outdoor workers, and the advocacy groups supporting them, insist that the current regulations aren’t enough. Workers are getting sick and dying in the heat, and summers are only getting hotter as climate change turns up the temperature.
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In an April 2 letter asking DeSantis to veto the bill, more than 40 labor and environmental groups said that outdoor workers are not protected by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration and employers are “not incentivized” to offer water, rest and shade.
“The industry argument against local worker protection ordinances is that employers are already protecting their workers. If this is the case, then, why are industry leaders concerned about a bill that can protect those workers whose employers may not be providing those protections? What is business afraid of if they are already doing the right thing? We know of hundreds, if not thousands, of stories of workers who do not receive those protections in the workplace,” they wrote.
The bill also bans local governments from requiring contractors to offer anything higher than the statewide minimum wage, which is currently $12 an hour and is set to rise to $13 an hour in September.
