36 million workers were to be better protected from heat by a new regulation from OSHA \u2013 the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Shade, drinking water, breaks: not luxuries, but the bare minimum a civilized society owes those who keep it running day after day. What President Joe Biden envisioned as the first nationwide protection against extreme heat has, under Donald Trump, turned to dust. In the summer of 2024 \u2013 the hottest year on record \u2013 the former administration announced a framework that was meant to respond to the escalating climate crisis. A simple idea, almost banal in its logic: if people suffer heat strokes while working, the state must intervene. Breaks, hydration, monitoring \u2013 a structure to prevent death in the name of productivity. But with the shift in power in early 2025, the rollback began. And with it, a quiet disappearance of public care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Donald Trump nominated David Keeling \u2013 a man who had previously worked for Amazon and UPS \u2013 as the new head of OSHA. Under his responsibility, there were over 300 violations of labor safety standards. More than two million dollars in fines. And multiple heat-related incidents. It\u2019s as if you appointed a gas station owner as fire chief. Keeling has not yet been confirmed. But the political winds have already changed direction. The Republican-dominated House Education and Workforce Committee called the planned heat protection regulation \u201cbureaucratic overreach\u201d in May 2025. A witness speaking for industry interests claimed people in New Mexico consider 80 degrees Fahrenheit \u201cperfect building weather.\u201d And anyway, what works for Texas might not apply to Maine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Greg Casar, a Democrat from Texas, answered with a sentence that laid bare the absurdity: \u201cIf it\u2019s 90 degrees in Austin or 90 degrees in Maine \u2013 90 degrees is still 90 degrees.\u201d While federal rules are being watered down or scrapped entirely, some states are trying to implement their own standards. California, Oregon, Maryland, Nevada, Washington \u2013 they have at least established partial protections. Others, like Florida, are moving in the opposite direction: Governor Ron DeSantis signed a 2024 law that prohibits cities and municipalities from creating their own regulations. A heat protection measure already passed in Miami-Dade was wiped out with the stroke of a pen. \u201cIt was basically just Miami,\u201d said DeSantis, \u201cnot the rest of the state.\u201d A sentence that sounds like an excuse \u2013 or a confession.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Texas also saw the abolition of a municipal right to rest breaks. The nickname for the law: \u201cDeath Star.\u201d Ana Gonzalez of the Texas AFL-CIO put it bluntly: \u201cOSHA standards are the absolute minimum. Anyone trying to abolish them just wants their billionaire buddies to make a few more cents.\u201d But Trump\u2019s rollback isn\u2019t limited to heat rules. He has effectively shut down NIOSH \u2013 the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. He closed OSHA field offices in multiple states. He handed over parts of OSHA\u2019s sensitive data to the \u201cDepartment of Government Efficiency\u201d led by Elon Musk. He paused measures targeting carcinogenic silica dust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What remains is a statistic of pain: Between 5.2 and 7.8 million workers suffer injuries or illnesses every year due to their jobs, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Between 600 and 2,000 people die each year from heat-related causes. And those most affected are the ones already barely visible: migrants, people of color, older workers. 67 percent of workers who died on the job in 2023 were immigrants. More than a third were over 55. \u201cWe are facing a national workers\u2019 rights crisis,\u201d says Jennifer Sherer, co-author of the report. \u201cDriven by Trump\u2019s attacks on workplace safety structures \u2013 at a time when climate change is dramatically increasing the risks.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But she also says: The states can act. They don\u2019t have to wait for Washington. Decades of research, functioning pilot programs, and legislative drafts already exist \u2013 everything is in place. And while in Washington old rights decay and new nominations advance in the shadows of power, the world outside is burning. A world where death at work is not caused by natural disasters, but by political indifference. The heat is killing. And Donald Trump? He calls it efficiency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n
36 Millionen Arbeiterinnen und Arbeiter sollten durch eine neue Verordnung der OSHA \u2013 der US-Arbeitsschutzbeh\u00f6rde \u2013 k\u00fcnftig besser vor Hitze gesch\u00fctzt werden. Schatten, Trinkwasser, Pausen: keine Luxusforderungen, sondern das Minimum, was ein zivilisiertes Gemeinwesen denen schuldet, die es tagt\u00e4glich am Laufen halten. Doch was unter Pr\u00e4sident Joe Biden als erster bundesweiter Schutz gegen extreme Hitze […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":3773,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"iawp_total_views":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[47,7,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-us-business","category-topstory","category-trump-s-world"],"yoast_head":"\n