Why limit such a basic thing as water breaks, not smoke break or lunch breaks but water??
In: Economics
It’s not a ban on breaks, it’s just a ban on local governments requiring them.
There’s a distinction to make in this context
Because there are federal standards. The bill is banning localities from establish individual standards, not banning protections all together.
https://www.osha.gov/heat-exposure/standards
If localities develop individual requirements it makes it very difficult for companies and employees to know what they are supposed to do. Take a construction company that works in 8 counties, 2 cities, and 15 townships. They now have to comply with different criteria across all of their worksites. One site has 15 minute breaks every 45 minutes and across the street across a county line the site has a 10 minute break every 2 hours but must be in an A/C environment. Same weather and conditions, two different regulatory requirements to comply with. What happens if a worker moves between sites? How is their work/rest cycle caculated? Does the worker know the schedules for the 30 different standards they work in?
I’m going to wear my politics on my sleeve here and point out that this is a prime example of Republican “local political decisions should be made at the local political level not the overreaching federal government, but also let’s not adopt local political standards and only adopt federal minimum requirements” hypocrisy.
The “argument” such as it is, is that if Florida is allowed to adopt local community laws regarding breaks, then employers will be confused and unsure what their explicit local laws are, and having a hodgepodge of separate labor laws by town will be anti-business, so they should just adhere to whatever the federal guidelines are.
The issue is that 2024 is believed to possibly be the hottest year on record, since the last hottest year on record which was..*checks notes*…2023.
And in the summer of 2023 a whole bunch of people um..*checks notes again*
Died. From heat
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