Big business lobbies against heat protections for workers as US boils
Big business lobbies against heat protections for workers as US boils
It’s literally cartoon villain level headlines of evil and some people will still play the both sides game as if its a close call.
Things like water, shade, and breaks are somehow woke, and can be added to the pile of totally normal and reasonable things that benefit nearly everyone but are now bad because the angry person on tv made this face while talking about it 😡
It’s literally just this comic but unironically
It is important to point out what kind of cartoon villain level this is.
It’s Mr Burns!
It’s much less nefarious than that for most places.
Air conditioning (heating and cooling) is another expense they’d rather not have. Business will never offer to pay more than they have to, it’s antithetical to their existence. It’s what’s happening at my job right now.
Not defending it at all, see my other comment in here explaining how I suffer from it too, just helping explain at least one reason why businesses choose to not care.
Business groups and lobbyists have aggressively opposed efforts at state and federal levels to enact heat protection standards for workers, claiming employers already practice what a standard would mandate, expressing concerns about the burden on employers, and claiming the efforts take a “wrong approach”.
No matter what regulations were implemented, regulators would have to watch them like a hawk to make sure they complied anyway. Also - people wouldn’t be dying if the current standards were sufficient for the current climate.
“We don’t need your standards, we already do all of that!”
Also, “We can’t afford to do all of that!”
I work in an industry working with other industrial businesses and we’ve seen so many of their employees get heat related injuries this summer. It’s very hard to get companies to view people as humans and not as a disposable asset.
A lot of times these companies won’t increase protections for workers without the government stepping in with laws and regulations.
I work in an open air factory on Long island. It’s gets over 90°F inside and whatever humidity it is outside is what we have here.
I’ve looked into the laws for factories in NY and the legislation is purposely vague… “all factories are to maintain proper humidity and temperature.” They then never define what proper temp and humidity is… My representatives don’t respond when asked about it.
I’m so happy it’s nice this week so far, last week was brutal…