“Excessive heat has been the leading weather-related killer in America for 30 years,” Huffington Post says. “Getting sick because of heat is an unfortunately common risk.”
But workers have little legal protection if employers fire them for refusing to work in dangerously hot conditions.
OSHA, the federal agency responsible for protecting workers’ safety and health, gives workers “the right to refuse dangerous work if there’s a clear risk of death or serious physical harm,” Huffington Post said. But if they’re fired, they have to win a retaliation case to have any recourse.
Meanwhile, getting OSHA inspectors to intervene when working conditions become dangerous is difficult, because OSHA has no standards in place defining when weather conditions pose heat risk to workers. And only a handful of states have enacted state standards. Washington is one of them.
Given patchwork or non-existent standards, and little or no enforcement, endangered workers’ best protection is banding together and walking off the job when continuing to work becomes too uncomfortable or downright dangerous. That’s one thing employers understand; and at a time of labor shortages, workers don’t have to put up with it.
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