Amid climate change and recent deaths, group demands worker protections from extreme heat

Raudel Felix García of Fontana thought someone was playing a cruel joke on him when he was told a decade ago that his brother had died after working in the grape fields of Kern County.

Audon Felix García had arrived from Zacatecas, Mexico just days before to work in the fields as he had done every other summer, his brother said. But the 41-year-old died two days after starting work loading boxes on the company truck, he said, due to temperatures that reached 112 degrees that summer day and employer “negligence” to properly care for him.

“It was hard to believe that he was simply gone,” a highly emotional Raudel Felix García, who owns his own landscaping business, said Tuesday in a media teleconference. “I had seen Audon five days before his death. He was healthy and ready to start another harvesting season.”

Now, Raudel Felix García is among those who are calling for the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration to establish the first federal standard that would protect workers from exposure to excessive heat.

“I don’t want any more families to go through the pain that my family went through,” he said.

RELATED STORY: U.S. Postal Service worker found dead in Woodland Hills amid Friday’s record-breaking heat

More than 100 labor, public health, environmental justice and environmental groups along with former occupational regulators and other individual petitioners submitted a petition to the federal agency calling for national protections for workers – both indoor and outdoor – who are at risk from extreme heat.

It marks the launch of a national campaign by the consumer rights advocacy group Public Citizen, the United Farm Workers Foundation and Farmworker Justice and others in an effort to raise awareness about the effects of climate change on workers’ health and safety.

“Preventing heat illness is urgently needed now more than ever,” Ellen Widess, a former Cal/OSHA chief and a board member of Farmworker Justice, said on the call. “Given climate change, rising heat, high-heat incidents and expanding areas of California and the nation which experience high heat, we have to do something.”

U.S. Rep. Judy Chu, D-Pasadena, said she plans to introduce legislation in Congress that would require the federal government to develop federal heat protection standards. These standards would likely require employers to provide workplaces with water, shade and rest breaks if needed to recover from the heat, similar to what California already requires.

The planned legislation would also direct employers to provide training for employees about risk factors that can lead to heat illness, Chu said.

“All workers should benefit from safe conditions whenever they work outside in the heat no matter where they are,” she said.

RELATED STORY: Federal investigators launch probe into Woodland Hills mail carrier’s death on 117-degree day

Locally, the issue of working in extreme heat gained attention recently after U.S. postal carrier Peggy Frank, 63, was found dead July 6 in her mail truck on a 117-degree day in Woodland Hills. Authorities, including OSHA, are probing whether heat was a factor.

Employers are obligated to protect employees from any hazardous condition, including potential heat stress, according to the Department of Labor.

In the case of the Postal Service, carriers are reminded daily to stay hydrated throughout their route, wear appropriate clothing, such as hats, and get into the shade whenever and as much as possible, officials said.

In 2005, after a series of farmworker deaths, California became the first state in the country to issue comprehensive heat standard protections for workers. Those regulations were strengthened a decade later and have likely saved lives, activists and experts say.

While there have been some tragic cases of heat-related deaths in the state since then, Chu said it’s probably related to enforcement of the state’s regulations.

“We feel it’s related to whether there are people being sent out to see whether employers are really doing their job and whether they are holding them accountable,” she said.

Chu added that she’s hopeful that the new legislation will tackle this problem.

That sentiment was echoed by Widess, the former Cal/Osha chief, who said that even in a state like California, it’s important to increase enforcement capacity of regulatory agencies.

“More inspectors are needed to make sure employers are doing right by workers, taking every step needed, and OSHA is chronically understaffed nationally,” she said.