The Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) will start the rulemaking process today to create a new federal heat standard. There aren’t many details yet on what the rule might look like, but the Biden administration’s announcement hints at a few things it could cover: thresholds for heat stress, heat exposure monitoring, and planning for acclimating to heat.
OSHA also plans to beef up enforcement of existing labor standards when it comes to heat-related hazards. When the heat index — a measure that includes humidity and temperature — rises above 80 degrees Fahrenheit, the agency says it will “prioritize” heat-related issues when it comes to workplace inspections and interventions. It also plans to pay closer attention to industries it deems as having a higher risk of heat stress, including agriculture, construction, delivery workers, and warehouses.
This should’ve always been considered
I believe this is geting put on the list due to workers not being as fungible in the past, I live in a western state that takes heat very seriously, immigration is down across the board, boarders are very closed. We do have significant inelastic labor supply for the foreseeable future. I think sections of are copetlists realize you shouldn’t let man child bougeious mulch perfectly good workers because they can’t be fucked to install a ac in the wearhouse. Thats my angle at least for now.
In bougeious circles their is a lot of talk about increasing productivity, we might see a lot of measures in the near future that increase employee health to get more productivity, things like 7/7 scheduling, they did this in the 1970s but didn’t go that far unlike Japan and Nordic counties the idea is happy people are more productive which is empirical, problem is the 80s they opened the boarders and flooded the lowest end of the working class so they could turn people more disposable.
Im not sold that the American ruling class will be nice even if they have every incentive. Time and time again they prove them selves to choose hate and loathing, even when it marginal more profit to be nice to workers.
