Florida farmworkers brace for more needless tragedy after state fails to protect them and a scorching summer looms

By Noreen Marcus, FloridaBulldog.org

Gov. Ron DeSantis made news last week by enshrining climate change denial in state law, just as 2024 is shaping up to be the hottest year on record with a predictably hyperactive hurricane season.

The state’s two million outdoor workers can only brace for more senseless tragedy. An extensive  effort to protect them from heat-related conditions that cause illness and death failed spectacularly this year when legislators stepped up instead to pass a law that bars municipalities from creating their own safeguards.

“Floridians feel it getting hotter and understand how difficult and dangerous it is to labor in the sun and heat,” says a March 29 letter from 88 environmental, progressive and religious groups that urged DeSantis to veto the legislation. “Preempting local governments’ ability to protect workers from climate-caused extreme heat is inhumane and will have enormous negative economic impacts when lost productivity is taken into account.”

DeSantis signed the controversial House Bill 433 on April 11. He said only Miami-Dade County was concerned about the issue of heat protection, and “I think they were pursuing something that was going to cause a lot of problems down there.”

One recently documented casualty of heat exposure is Salvadore Garcia Espita, 26, a Mexican migrant laborer who collapsed and died from heat stroke last September on his first day planting sugar cane in an open field in Belle Glade.

On April 15 the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) announced a $27,655 fine against Belle Glade-based McNeill Labor Management for allegedly exposing workers to the hazards of high ambient heat. The agency said the company failed to report, as required, Garcia’s hospitalization and death.

McNeill said OSHA’s findings are inaccurate; the company is contesting them before an administrative judge.

LAW PREVENTS HUMANE RULES

“Heat can trigger heart attacks, dizziness and falls. It can cause or exacerbate other health problems,” said Dominique O’Connor, a climate justice organizer for the Farmworker Association of Florida’s Apopka office. Farmworkers die from heat-related causes at about 20 times the rate of other civilians, the association reported.

Farmworker advocates propose common-sense practices such as regular water and shade breaks and approved leave when workers show symptoms of heat-induced illness. They risk getting fired – some even risk deportation – when they try to take time off for clinic visits or recovery, according to the advocates.

But as of July 1, the effective date for House Bill 433, none of those humane practices is likely to be introduced anywhere in Florida in the foreseeable future.

Using a legal doctrine called preemption, the law reserves exclusively to the state “regulation of heat exposure requirements” in the workplace. The law tasks the state with adopting heat rules if the federal government fails to do so.

That might make sense if Florida had baseline worker heat protection. It doesn’t. OSHA is writing some regulations, but they’re seven or eight years away from adoption; enforcement follows that.

In contrast, four years ago the Florida Legislature voted unanimously to require that schools protect students from the effects of extreme heat. Legislators apparently were moved by the death in July 2017 of Zachary Tyler Martin-Polsenberg, 16, who collapsed from heat stroke during football practice at Riverdale High School in Fort Myers.

FARMWORKER DIED ALONE

Why the wildly disparate response to the same problem afflicting two different groups?

The most cogent answer isn’t racism or anti-migrant bias, although the high school football player was white and Florida farmworkers are mainly brown-skinned migrants from Mexico and Central America. Many farmworkers are undocumented.

Greg Schell, a Palm Beach Gardens lawyer who works for Southern Migrant Legal Services, explained what happened. “Because of the potential costs associated with heat protection legislation, business interests actively supported this year’s preemption legislation and made sure that legislation mandating heat protection for workers statewide never even received a hearing.”

Heat protection for students, however, imposed no costs on big businesses with heavyweight lobbyists. Legislators could pass this bill and show empathy — a good look for their constituents — without upsetting campaign donors.

This year, Schell said, agriculture and construction industry operatives were alarmed by a Miami-Dade initiative to protect 300,000 outdoor workers, many of them employed in the fields and nurseries of Homestead.

County commissioners took action after the death last July of a Guatemalan migrant laborer. Efrain Lopez Garcia, 29, was picking tropical fruit in a Homestead grove when he fell ill, became disoriented, wandered away from his crew, collapsed and died.

“All of this could have been prevented with the right legislation,” Yvette Cruz of the Farmworker Association of Florida told the Miami Herald at the time. “All we ask is for four basic things: water, shade, breaks and to work with somebody — not to be left alone.”

Miami-Dade County Commissioner Marleine Bastien introduced a bill requiring companies to teach workers about heat safety and to guarantee regular water and shade breaks. But the bill never gained traction; it disappeared when DeSantis signed the law that prevents counties from protecting workers.

FL ECONOMY WILL SUFFER

Schell said the outcry over the preemption law “is really much ado about nothing. No locality in Florida has passed or was near passing heat protection legislation. When the Miami-Dade County Commission began to seriously consider such an ordinance, business interests began to apply pressure and the proposed measure was quickly tabled, never to see the light of day again.

“So even had the governor not signed the legislation, there was no imminent chance of heat protection laws being enacted in Florida,” Schell said. Bastien could not be reached by Florida Bulldog for comment.

No one knows exactly how many farmworkers die from heat-related causes. “There’s serious underreporting,” said O’Connor, the climate activist. “Sometimes it’s hard to pinpoint. These deaths often get reported as something else even though the trigger may be heat stress.”

Heat kills an estimated 2,000 U.S. workers and injures another 100,000 every year, according to Public Citizen, a nonprofit advocacy group for consumers and workers.

The Florida law that takes effect July 1 could impact nearly 1.8 million adult outdoor workers, a population that’s disproportionately Hispanic and noncitizen, says an analysis by KFF (formerly the Kaiser Family Foundation).

There will be profound economic repercussions. By 2050, extreme heat-related labor productivity losses could cost Florida up to $52 billion, according to a 2021 study that the nonprofit KFF summarized in an April 26 news release.