Scott Maxwell is a regular columnist for Tthe Orlando Sentinel. In this article, he discusses the meanest, most heartless, most inhumane law passed by the legislature. How about letting workers have a water and heat break in Florida’s hot, humid climate? Employers don’t want workers to take time off. They prefer to let them struggle under a fiery sun, even if they collapse.
Maxwell writes:
I’ve written a lot of pieces about a lot of cruddy bills in Florida.
But I can’t recall one that generated more universal disgust among readers than the one lawmakers passed a few months ago banning cities and counties from making sure outdoor workers get shade and water on blistering hot days.
Miami-Dade was discussing local regulations that would guarantee roofers, farmworkers and others who toil in Florida’s blistering sun basic things like water breaks, shade and first-aid treatment for heat stroke — the kind of precautions most people with a conscience would provide for their dog.
Yet Florida’s big business lobby didn’t want to be forced to provide any of that. So they got their puppets in the Legislature to pass a law making it illegal for any local government to pass heat-safety regulations. Yes, their target was water and shade.
I described it as “The most shameful law Florida passed this year.” And readers overwhelmingly agreed. The disgust came from Republicans, Democrats and independents all around the state.
“This is so wrong in so many ways,” said reader Ingrid, who noted that, as a homeowner, she offers shade, water, seating and bathrooms to workers painting the outside of her house. “It is the American and right thing to do…”
And multiple conservative and independent readers said this was the kind of bill that made them think the pendulum of one-party power has swung too far. “So often, I no longer support Democratic legislators because I feel they are too far left,” Bruce said. “After reading this, I must vote for them anyway because others are too far to the right.”
But a question I also received over and over was: Why?
Why would lawmakers — most of whom have families and many of whom claim to be people of faith — support a bill that denies guaranteed access to things so fundamental as water and shade?
Well, here’s the remarkable reality: They normally wouldn’t. In fact, they didn’t.
Just two years ago, Republican legislators joined Democrats to unanimously pass a bill out of committee that would’ve guaranteed similar heat-safety protections to workers across the entire state.
At the time, GOP legislators described the heat protections as simply humane. One said it was “heartwarming” to see everyone agree on such a basic concept. The bill’s sponsor, Miami Republican Senator Ana Maria Rodriguez said: “It’s really about health and wellness and making sure people are protected.”
But then, as the Seeking Rents website that tracks the way money influences public policy in Florida recently revealed, the state’s homebuilding and business lobby got involved. And the bill died.
Then this year, the business lobby put the push on steroids. The Florida Chamber of Commerce not only wanted to make sure that no state laws guaranteed workers heat-safety protections; they wanted lawmakers to pass a law that banned counties from doing the same.
The chamber even warned lawmakers that if they didn’t do as instructed, the politicians’ scores would be docked in the business group’s annual “How They Voted” report card. The chamber told lawmakers that their votes on this one issue would be counted twice.
That is how badly the chamber — which is funded by companies like Disney, Publix, U.S. Sugar and Florida Power & Light — wanted to make sure no companies in this state would be subject to local heat-safety regulations.
We’ve all watched ugly politics transpire in Tallahassee. But this was uglier than usual. Veteran Tallahassee journalist Bill Cotterell — who has covered Florida politics for more than half a century — wrote that this was an example of how “the pay-to-play system goes beyond regular back-scratching and turns into cruelty.”
Mark Wilson, the president of the chamber, disagrees. He says readers who are outraged and observers like me and Cotterell don’t understand the issue.
He says the reaction is union-generated “hysteria,” that the chamber is “working to make Florida the safest state in the nation,” that the U.S. division of Occupational Health and Safety Measures already requires companies to protect their workers and that most companies want to do so anyway.
You probably don’t need me to tell you how silly that last argument sounds. If all companies were already doing all these things, they wouldn’t have been so frantically lobbying against them. House Bill 433 bans counties from requiring employers to provide things like “water consumption,” “cooling measures” and “appropriate first-aid measures.”
OSHA does not regulate these things the same way. Instead, it has something called a “general duty clause” that broadly says employers shall provide a work environment “free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm to his employees.” Its website explicitly says: “OSHA does not have a specific regulation regarding heat stress.”
And while Wilson said OSHA is working on more specific heat-safety provisions, the simple fact is they don’t exist now.
The reality is that businesses in Florida have gotten so used to having their way, they don’t want anyone telling them what to do — even when it has to do with worker safety. And this state has a political majority willing do whatever they’re told, so that they can continue getting endorsements and campaign donations. Even it means opposing basic safety measures they previously supported.
That’s something for you to remember the next time you see a campaign mailer telling you that some politician has an “A-plus” business rating. This is the kind of thing they had to support to earn it.
smaxwell@orlandosentinel.com
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