DeSantis signs bill banning local heat protections for workers
DeSantis signs bill banning local heat protections for workers
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has signed legislation barring local and municipal governments from requiring their own heat protections for workers. The law, House Bill 433, blocks local governments…
The bill’s passage comes after the state’s most populous county, Miami-Dade, considered local heat protection rules that would have been among the most stringent in the country. That proposal would have required employers to provide shade, water and 10-minute breaks to workers every two hours on days over a certain heat threshold.
The fact that that would have been among the most stringent protections in the country is incredibly sad. Those protections should be in place nationwide by default at a minimum. Nobody benefits from overheated workers, who are human beings by the way. I feel like it’s so much easier to just be decent and take care of peoples’ basic needs.
You’re a monster if you don’t think your workers deserve to have a few minutes in the shade whenever the fuck they want. People will work harder if they feel like they’re safe and respected. Everybody wins.
I've been told that the armies in many countries use sliding scales of work-rest cycles based on temperature and humidity. For example in Canada, above 35°C you may only have half the crew working 30 minutes on 30 minutes off. Meaning you have 50% of the work being done 100% of the time. Hydration and heat stroke checks are strongly enforced as well. The American army does similar if I've been told correctly.
How American civilians and labourers are not allowed these very same standards is insane to me. People die because of this shit and unions are just okay with this?
Most workplaces are not unionized, and most states are “at will” employment meaning anyone can be fired at any time for anything.
TL;DR: Reagan
Nobody benefits from overheated workers, who are human beings by the way.
Guess what? A significant number, if not a majority of the people affected by this will be immigrants. Republicans consider them both replaceable and not human.
This is one of those things that hurts the "right" people.
I used to be like you, and ultimately I still am - but people seem to need this oppression if we're ever going to make government work for us again.
There is a very dangerous trend of voter apathy, mis/disinformation, and a near complete lack of understanding on the functions of government and democracy.
Until people are actually willing to "work together" (decide we don't need an orphan crushing machine - not actually work hand in hand with everyone else) we kind of deserve the governments we have.
It's plain as day that powerful interests are getting absolutely everything they want, while successfully convincing the general population they shouldn't have job security, health care, social safety nets, education, and an environment that isn't entirely poisoned.
So many people are willingly voting against their interests to hurt someone less well off. Others simply don't care to pay attention, vote, or refuse to apply logic to information if it suits their bias even though it hurts them.
There are huge amounts of bad actors (media in general completely ignoring the obvious rise of facisim and ringing the dinner bell instead of the alarm) doing everything they can to obfuscate the truth and play on people's bias/hate/fear are direct attacks on democracy.
It feels like we're literally experiencing how Hitler rose to power. People are aware of things like project 2025, J6, Christo facisim, bought and paid for supreme Court, outright lies and disinformation campaigns from most media sources, and billionaires dictating to governments.
The general population mostly shrugs, does a finger wag, a head shake, and call it a day.
The far right is organizing globally to allocate funds and think tanks, lobbyists, controlling media, having people of influence throughout government, military, and police. The response? everyone still treats them as disconnected fringe weirdos doing their thing, not something worth dedicating any time to.
You hear Trump supporters saying J6 was an inside ANTIFA FBI job of fake actors - who are completely innocent American heros that are political prisoners and need to be pardoned? Such cognative dissonance shouldn't be able to exist in nearly half the population, but does due to trusted sources experiencing 0 consequences for pushing obvious lies - so it must be true.
When push comes to shove (shove comes to fist?) maybe the Lazy left will actually show up to resist their oppression, hopefully they unite before it's too late.
Companies provide all of these to workers already, it’s to illegal workers being exploited this bill would benefit and who Desantis wants to kill off.
It’s hard to understand how what you said - and a county mandating these changes - come together. A city actually voted on this issue, they don’t do that because there’s nothing going on; it means this is a pressing matter in their area. Companies clearly aren’t providing breaks if a city actually votes to mandate this.
Freedom for choice of transit? Nah
Freedom for affordable housing? Nah
Freedom to not provide safety to workers? Hell yeah! 🇺🇲🦅
Glad to see my governor making great choices for my fellow Floridians. Really was an important issue to prioritize too.
TBH I just don't understand how this kind of human garbage policy can be popular anywhere. I mean, it must be popular if DeSantis has been elected right? Who are the people voting for this shit? And who are the people letting it happen?
I am guessing the folks impacted by this are not empowered to vote against him, either because they are undocumented or poor or what not. I'm sure some still vote for him, but I don't know how anyone can pass this law. The earth is getting hotter and laboring outside in the hottest part of the day without protections is going to get people killed.
It hasn't been proven yet but I expect that the voting machines - invented during the George Bush era - don't work right. It cannot be the case that americans are dumb enough to actually support the right wing to the degree they otherwise appear to. Then again I'm watching from an actually civilized country, in horror, as y'all cannibalize yourselves and your democracy over some retards, and ruin ours by proxy, so according to fuckmericans i can't possibly know what I'm talking about..
Nothing says freedom like the freedom to take away other people's freedom. Fuck fascists and all their supporters.
I guess since he's never going to be remembered as the cruelest president in U.S. history, he's settling on the cruelest governor. Although considering he hasn't re-legalized slavery yet, he's got some work to do.
He's just letting the free market decide. I mean, everyone knows that no company would buy a building where a worker died constructing it. And no workers would decide to work for a company without heat protections, right?
I assume that Miami-Dade County had a reason to draft legislation like this. There weren't political points to be gained here since this was a low profile issue until this bill made it high profile. The county wouldn't have gone through the effort if there wasn't a problem to be addressed.
I could understand repealing a statewide mandate for protections if it was costing money to enforce and wasn't seeing results. I don't understand restricting local governments from implementing their own local protections. What harm would the protections have done?
They are blue areas doing good things to help their constituents. DeSantis couldn't have that. It's really not any deeper than that. The cruelty is the point.
Texas recently did something similar: they banned requiring water breaks for workers. It sounded like it was a political move to show they were helping businesses be more productive, even if it doesn't really help much while still hurting the people they want to hurt.
I have never seen a company that doesn’t have heat protections already in place.
I’ve seen too many crews encouraged to skip heat breaks, or not offered them. What part of the country are you in?
Sure but those are usually backed by insurance and policy. If it's backed by law that's a whole other set of reasons to avoid breaking it that could be a lot more deleterious.
The party of Jesus, everyone.
The only thing they know about Jesus is that he trims hedges well, and is super cheap because you have to pay him in cash. Kinda tough to understand that accent, though.
Was never; will never be.
So not just remove them but straight ban them.
Just how stupid can you be?
Wonder if Louis Rossman will be as quick to put out a video defending this as he was the one in Texas
I remember being on a job site one time and everyone got sent home because the air quality was so bad it was a hazard to work. I kid, I kid… we got sent home because OSHA was going around town popping every job site for making people work in that weather, and a $5k fine was enough to panic all the foremen.
Ah, good times.
This is just gonna lead to violence. Some petty tyrant boss is going to be killed and left at the work site over this shit. No one is going to tell who did it because the dead asshole took away the basics of life from them.