“It’s a cycle that’s not going to stop until we put a real standard in place.”Īmazon has long disputed allegations that its warehouse employees are overworked or that conditions are unsafe and said the San Bernardino site hasn’t had a work-related heat illness this year. “It’s heartbreaking to come in to work to hear that another co-worker, a potential friend, has fainted or needed medical attention from heat exhaustion,” Rivera said at the May hearing. But as the 2024 presidential campaign revs up, policy efforts risk slowing even as the climate crisis intensifies. Union efforts, including a UPS labor deal set to air-condition vehicles for the first time, have added momentum. The Biden administration issued heat safety orders last month, and Democrats recently advanced new workplace protections. “But as time went on, it was clear that indoor workers were suffering from heat stress,” too.

“We were concerned about heat with outdoor workers at the beginning of the Obama administration,” said Debbie Berkowitz, who served within it as a senior official for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Amazon employee Daniel Rivera has urged California regulators to implement heat safety rules enacted seven years ago. As e-commerce hastens a warehousing boom in some of the hottest parts of the country, regulations have lagged behind workplace heat risks that range from mild to deadly. warehouses where fast-paced physical tasks like loading boxes can raise body temperatures to dangerous levels that many climate-control systems struggle to counter, researchers, advocates and authorities say. Rivera is among the roughly 1.8 million people who work in U.S. The state has seen its four hottest summers in that time. While California is still on track to becoming the third state to impose such standards, rulemaking has taken nearly seven years. Two months earlier, Rivera had pleaded with regulators at a workplace safety hearing to finally implement the indoor heat protections state lawmakers enacted in 2016. “The way they’re pressing their associates, combined with the extreme heat,” he said, a cold water bottle against his forehead, “it’s just due for a disaster.”

Have a nice death physical switch