Working Inside During a Heat Wave? Learn How New California Rules Protect You

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or several days in July, it was hotter than 100 degrees in San José. Gilberta Acevedo has worked at a Taco Bell on the city’s westside for 10 years, and in that time, she’s worked through plenty of heat waves. But this time around, the heat was intolerable for her.

“As soon as you walked into the kitchen, you would start sweating,” she said in Spanish. “It was worse than walking into an oven.”

It had been weeks since the air conditioner unit stopped working, Acevedo said. “My head started to spin, and even though I was drinking water, I felt like I wanted to throw up,” Acevedo said. “But it got to the point where I knew I had to do something. My health is at risk. I have children, and I cannot keep working like this.”

After asking her supervisor multiple times to improve conditions in the kitchen and not seeing any results, Acevedo — along with coworkers and with the help of the California Fast Food Workers Union — organized a one-day strike in July to demand that company management make repairs and educate employees on how to avoid heat illness. Soon after the strike, management fixed the air conditioner and held trainings.

“We need to have a safe place to work. Even if we’re indoors, the heat can also really affect us,” she said. And Acevedo isn’t alone, as workers across the state have had to take action to demand protections against excessive heat throughout this summer — the world’s hottest on record.

But there’s now some good news: California recently enacted heat protections for employees who work indoors. As of July 24, the state’s Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board (Cal/OSHA) will enforce a whole set of rules that protect indoor workers, regardless of their immigration or employment status.

For almost two decades, Cal/OSHA has had protections for people who work outdoors, like farmworkers and delivery drivers, for example, but these never included indoor employees. Now, the millions of Californians who work in restaurants, offices, warehouses, supermarkets and almost every other indoor workplace are legally protected by the state when working in excessive or dangerous heat.

KQED spoke to both Cal/OSHA and labor rights advocates to better understand these new workplace protections and how workers can advocate for themselves if their employer is not following the rules and enabling a dangerously hot work environment. And even if you don’t feel comfortable talking about these things with your supervisor, you still have options.

When do the new indoor heat protections in California apply?

The new rules are about a dozen pages long and are split into two sections:

• Your rights as an employee — and responsibilities of your employer — when temperatures in the workplace reach or exceed 82 degrees
• What your employer must do when temperatures reach or exceed 87 degrees

Remember, these rules refer to the temperature of the area where you work, not the temperature outside on the street.

It took California a long time to make these workplace rules official: the Legislature first passed a bill calling for these regulations back in 2016, but it wouldn’t be until seven years later that Cal/OSHA presented a draft of the potential rules. It would take several more months for the draft to make its way through different state agencies, and finally, on July 23, the Office of Administrative Law gave the final seal of approval.

Your rights when indoor workplace temperatures reach 82 degrees

Once temperatures reach 82 degrees inside your indoor workplace, your employer needs to provide you with four things:

Water for employees

Employers must provide each worker with at least two gallons of water per day, which is about two 16.9 oz water bottles per hour.

This water should be “fresh, pure and suitably cool,” said Eric Berg, chief of health for Cal/OSHA. “Water should be free of charge. Employers can never charge employees for this,” he said.“It has to be as close as practicable where employees are working.”

If a worker needs more water during their shift, they should be able to drink all the water they need without fear of reprisal. If folks are running low on water, it’s the employer’s responsibility to have a plan in place to get more water before it runs out — not the employees’.

Cool-down areas for employees

“This can be an outdoor shaded area or an indoor rest area that’s cool,” Berg said. This space must stay at a temperature that’s less than 82 degrees and be available whenever a worker feels like they need it. These cool-down areas also must be big enough to comfortably fit employees and have fresh water that is easily accessible.

However, Berg adds, cool-down areas must also be spaces that workers aren’t discouraged from using, like a manager’s office. “It’s not going to feel comfortable to rest inside the manager’s office,” he said.

Rest for employees

Under the new rules, workers in California have the right to take preventative cool-down rests whenever they feel close to overheating. This break can happen in the designated cool-down area anytime during a worker’s shift. While they’re taking that break, their supervisor needs to check in with them to ask if they are experiencing any symptoms of heat illness. A worker can keep resting until they feel ready to go back into the workplace.

If a worker feels or shows symptoms of heat illness (like vomiting, feeling disoriented, walking unsteadily or acting irrationally), their supervisor needs to immediately provide first aid or get the affected employee medical attention. And if someone is, in fact, found to be experiencing heat illness, they can’t be ordered back to work until all their symptoms have gone away and they have fully recovered.

Training for employees and supervisors

Both employees and supervisors need to be trained about these new Cal/OSHA protections, which are required by law. Workers should know the symptoms of heat illness, while employers should ensure supervisors are trained on how to monitor the health of their team and what to do during an emergency.

Your rights when indoor workplace temperatures reach 87 degrees

Once your workplace reaches 87 degrees, your boss still needs to provide you with the four basic protections (water, cool-down areas, rest and training) above. But on top of those, they also need to start doing what Cal/OSHA calls “assessment and control measures.”

What does this mean? Put simply, your employer needs to start keeping a detailed record of the temperature in your workplace throughout the work shift. The records need to include the date, time, and specific location of all measurements.

And something important to clarify: your employer cannot just look at the weather app on their phone and record that temperature. They need to manually measure the temperature of the workspace itself using an actual thermometer.

Having this record in place can also help workers in the future if they need to report an unsafe workplace, said AnaStacia Nicol Wright, policy manager at Worksafe, an Oakland-based labor rights nonprofit that’s advocated for years in favor of indoor heat protections.

“If the employee chooses to take some kind of legal action, there are these records that were supposed to be kept that they can request access to,” she said.

Something else to keep in mind: if your job requires you to wear full body clothing throughout your shift, your employer is required to start keeping track of temperature earlier on, when it’s 82 degrees.

“Full body clothing would be protective equipment or coveralls meant to protect the product or protect the employee from contamination,” Berg from Cal/OSHA said. “It doesn’t include breathable clothing, like a uniform.”

Is my employer required to have A/C installed during a heat wave?

No, the new heat regulations don’t require employers to install air conditioning in the workplace if they don’t already have it.

In its rulebook, Cal/OSHA considers air conditioning to be a type of “control measure” and employers “shall use control measures … to minimize the risk of heat illness.”

If A/C is available on-site, it should be turned on to bring the temperature down to below 87 degrees. The same goes for any cooling fans and swamp coolers available. And if this isn’t enough to bring temperatures below 87 degrees, employers then have to start applying other strategies, including:

• Requiring cool-down breaks with more frequency
• Rotating different workers in high-heat areas
• Distributing personal heat-protective equipment to employees

But if there isn’t A/C already on-site — as is the case in many Bay Area homes and workplaces — an employer isn’t required to install it. That’s because Cal/OSHA has to take into account all the different types of workplaces in California before establishing a new rule, Berg said. This part of the rulebook “doesn’t dictate a specific measure,” he explained. “It just says to look at all the possible controls and implement what’s effective and what’s feasible for that workplace.”

However, that doesn’t prevent workers from coming together to request A/C if they feel they need it — as was the case of Acevedo and her coworkers at the Taco Bell in San José.

Do these protections apply to everyone who works indoors?

Cal/OSHA’s new rules protect every person working indoors in California — with one exception: people who work in prisons, local detention facilities and juvenile facilities. California’s prisons employ tens of thousands of guards, nurses, janitors and other positions, along with nearly 39,000 incarcerated people who also have jobs in state prisons, most of whom make less than $1 per hour.

Despite the fact that prisons are also exposed to extreme heat — officials are currently investigating the death of a woman imprisoned at the Central California Women’s Facility in Madera County that advocates say was a case of heat exhaustion — Cal/OSHA does not include this population in the new protections. That’s because regulators agreed to exempt state prisons as part of a compromise with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration, which claimed including prisons would cost these facilities billions of dollars to comply.

Outside of prisons, these regulations apply in every single indoor workplace in the state, including restaurants, schools, offices, shops, warehouses, factories and any other type of facility where employees work indoors.

They also apply when workers lack a permanent legal status in the United States. “All our regulations that protect workers apply regardless of what papers a person may have or not have,” Cal/OSHA’s Berg said. “Immigration status has no importance whatsoever.”

Heat protections also apply in workspaces where employees are working without a formal job contract in place. If there’s an exchange of money for work you’re doing, that establishes an employer-employee relationship, even without a signed contract.

It’s over 82 degrees where I work, but my employer isn’t following the new rules. What can I do?

Now that these rules are in place, workers have a role to play in making sure their employers actually follow them, Wright with Worksafe said.

“We can’t just rely on the goodness of humanity,” she said.

First, share the information

If your employer isn’t providing you and your coworkers with enough water, rest or training during a heat wave, you are protected by law to bring this up to your supervisor.

It might be possible that they are indeed unaware of the new regulations — and if that’s the case, you can share with them the complete Cal/OSHA rules and let them know that the agency can even help them create a plan to fulfill all the requirements.

Keep a record of what’s going on

Unfortunately, not all workers may have a positive relationship with their supervisor. If you think your employer is simply refusing to provide heat protections, Wright recommends that you start documenting what’s happening at work.

“Document, log and write down whenever your employer fails to provide these protections,” she said. These notes don’t have to be too complex, she adds — they can be as simple as making a quick note on your phone or on a piece of paper that you keep to yourself, which describes things like asking your supervisor for water or a cool-down break and being turned down.

“Just write down the date and time,” Wright said. She gives the following as an example of what an effective note could look like:

July 1: there was no cooldown area provided. At 1:30 p.m., I asked my employer if I could sit down and take a break in his office because it has A/C and he said no. I asked again at 3:30 p.m. because I told him I wasn’t feeling well. He said no again.

Keeping track of everything going on at your workplace will help you later down the line if you choose to file a complaint against your employer with Cal/OSHA. With that in mind, Wright recommends talking with your employer about heat issues through email or text so you have a written record of their response as well.

“Now it gets tricky,” she said, “because once you start documenting things like that — especially if you work somewhere where you’re not normally talking via email correspondence — [your employer] will probably get the idea that you’re trying to lay the groundwork for a legal case.”

If you’re nervous about how your boss may react if you start talking about what’s happening at your job, another option is to first talk to your coworkers and check in if they’re also struggling with the heat. “If you act in pairs — if you were to go and complain with another employee, you’re engaging in what’s considered ‘concerted action’ and that gives you some additional protections,” Wright said.

Stay calm and document anything you’re experiencing that goes against the rights the state legally affords you.

You can file a safety complaint against your employer with Cal/OSHA by contacting the agency’s field office closest to your place of work. A list with the contact information of each field office is available on the Cal/OSHA website. You can even file a complaint anonymously if you fear possible retaliation by your employer.

If you feel nervous about contacting Cal/OSHA, you can also reach out to one of the many organizations in California that provides free legal aid to workers to talk about what’s happening at your job:

• Legal Aid at Work: 415-404-9093
• Asian Law Caucus: 415-896-1701
• Centro Legal de la Raza (Oakland): 510-437-1554
• La Raza Centro Legal (San Francisco): 415-575-3500
• Trabajadores Unidos Workers United: 415-621-4155
• Center for Workers’ Rights (Sacramento): 916-905-5857
• California Rural Legal Assistance (Central Valley): 800-337-0690

What if your employer retaliates against you?

Documenting when your employer isn’t keeping you safe — and speaking out about it — is protected in California by law. In fact, it’s illegal for an employer to fire or cut the hours of someone who speaks up about their labor rights.

But while that’s what the law says, the reality can be much more complicated.

“They can’t retaliate against you — but the reality is that they can,” Wright said.

Some employers will step up and start following safety rules once they see workers start to take action, she said. “Sometimes you put them on notice that you know your rights.”

“But you do have to unfortunately consider that this could put you on your employer’s radar and risk losing your job because of it,” Wright said. “It’s not fair. It’s not right. Anytime we have a client, we have to tell them of what may happen once you file against your employer.”

If you lose your job or hours after talking to your employer about heat protections, you have a reason to file a retaliation complaint with the state Labor Commissioner’s Office. You can file a retaliation complaint online by calling 714-558-4913 or through email.

While it takes several months for a complaint to move through the Labor Commissioner’s Office, this agency does have the power to investigate employers, impose penalties and give affected workers their lost wages or even their job back.

This guide includes reporting from KQED’s Farida Jhabvala Romero and Brian Krans.