Just as an unprecedented heat wave led some Texans to experience 51°C highs, Governor Greg Abbott signed off on a bill that nullifies rules mandating water breaks for construction workers.
A heat dome of high pressure over the southwest United States and northern Mexico has brought scorching early-summer temperatures to several U.S. states, including New Mexico, Louisiana, Arkansas, Kansas and Missouri, reports The Guardian. More than 40 million people are under heat alert, and in Texas, cities have reached an unprecedented heat index (how hot it feels to the human body with humidity factored in), with Corpus Christi hitting 51°C, Rio Grande Village reaching 47°C, and Del Rio marking 46°C.
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The extreme heat followed a weekend of destructive storms that left hundreds of thousands of people without power across the affected states. In Texas, the state power utility asked users to cut back on air conditioning to avoid straining the grid.
“These conditions are very stressful to the people living in the region,” said Andrew Pershing, director of climate science at Climate Central. “We are seeing a really intense, widespread, and long-lasting event,” and “human-caused climate change made these conditions more than five times more likely.”
Energy prices are also skyrocketing, as high demand couples with lagging supply, reports The Hill. Last week, real-time trading prices were nearly 100 times higher than the previous week, before the heat wave began. The state’s expanded solar supply helped offset the record load, but the stagnant, hot air blanketing Texas caused wind turbines to produce less power than usual.
The intense conditions did not deter Abbott from signing [pdf] House Bill 2717—a broad law that cites ordinances establishing minimum breaks in the workplace as one of its “explicit targets”, explains the Texas Tribune. “The law will nullify ordinances enacted by Austin in 2010 and Dallas in 2015 that established 10-minute breaks every four hours so that construction workers can drink water and protect themselves from the sun.”
Coming into effect in September, the law “also prevents other cities from passing such rules in the future,” the Tribune says.
Unions say undoing the break mandate would increase the risk of heat-related worker deaths in Texas, when such fatalities are already more common than in any other state. The bill is expected to hit hardest for Latino and Black communities that are already disproportionately affected by extreme heat.
“Construction is a deadly industry,” Ana Gonzalez, deputy director of policy and politics at the Texas AFL-CIO, told ABC News. “Whatever the minimum protection is, it can save a life. We are talking about a human right.”
The bill’s proponents say it eliminates a “patchwork” of regulatory requirements across Texas that make compliance tricky for some businesses. Local regulations on breaks for construction workers are unnecessary, they add, since the right to a safe work environment is guaranteed through the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).
But OSHA does not have a national standard for heat-related illnesses, pointed out David Michaels, who led OSHA from 2009 to 2017 and now teaches at the George Washington University School of Public Health.
“The better solution would be to have a national standard, but since we do not, local ordinances are very important for saving lives,” he said. “Prohibiting these local laws will result in workers being severely hurt or killed.”
OSHA is developing a workplace heat standard, but the process takes years of input and fine tuning, writes HR Dive.Until it creates the formal standard, the agency has a national emphasis program disseminating its mantra for beating the heat: “Water, rest, shade.”
Abbott may have missed that memo.
