‘Your Body Fights to Stay Cool’: Workers Toil in Record Heat as Federal Rule Stays Frozen
As record heat grips the United States, workers who spend their days outdoors or in sweltering kitchens say the danger is not abstract. It is measured in soaked shirts, dizzy afternoons and body temperatures that edge toward crisis.
For Esther Minton, a member of Sheet Metal Workers Local Union 28 in New York City, even a 90F summer day calls for a long-sleeved shirt.
“Working outside, you don’t have cover. There’s nowhere for you to really go if you’re on a roof or if you’re on the side of a building,” Minton said. “Having the sun beaming on your skin all day long, you’ll never make it through, so what you wear makes a difference.”
Minton’s routine reflects the harsh realities of summer work: staying hydrated, using portable toilets that become hotter than the air outside and handling copper materials heated by direct sunlight.
“Before the day is over, by the time you’re at break at lunchtime—say 12pm, when the sun is really out and doing its thing—you are drained,” she said. “Your body fights hardcore to stay cool, your body fights hard to not be dehydrated.”
This summer was the hottest on record in the U.S., putting workers on the front lines of a heat crisis expected to increase heat-related illnesses and deaths. The growing toll comes as the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress move to roll back federal rules designed to protect workers from heat injury and illness.
In January 2025, the White House indefinitely froze Biden-era heat safety regulations that would have required employers to provide water, shade, rest breaks, training and prevention plans for workers. House Republicans have also advanced legislation that would bar the Department of Labor from enacting workplace protections for heat exposure. In Florida and Texas, Republican lawmakers have passed similar measures prohibiting local city and county governments from adopting their own heat protections.
Major business groups and lobbyists, including those representing agricultural and construction industries, have strongly opposed a federal heat standard. They argue that employers already take the steps that would be mandated and that a new rule would be an unnecessary burden.
But workers at a recent Climate Week roundtable in New York City rejected that claim, saying employers are not doing enough to keep people safe in extreme heat.
Donald Nesbit, executive vice-president of Local 372 and a former school cafeteria worker, recalled spending every summer in an old school building, preparing meals in a basement kitchen.
“It was torture. We clocked temperatures at 130F to 140F in school kitchens during these summer conditions,” Nesbit said during the roundtable. “If we were to lock our animals in a car with those same conditions, we would be arrested, right? And yet, workers are working in those conditions, right, so there [have] to be protections. We have to push as a society to make protections better.”
Only seven states currently have enforceable heat prevention standards for workers. A December 2025 study published in the journal Health Affairs found that California’s outdoor heat protections had led to at least a 33% reduction in heat-related workplace fatalities since 2010.
“We need a federal heat standard in this country,” said Julie Su, New York City’s deputy mayor for economic justice and former secretary of labor under Biden. In June, Su and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani issued heat protections for city workers, citing the White House’s pullback.
“We had one proposed and the administration is not moving on it. There are also lots of states that have a standard, and New York does not have one,” Su said. “In the city, we are doing everything we can with the powers that we have.”
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration estimates that more than 550 U.S. workers die and nearly 28,000 are injured each year from heat exposure. Heat caused more than 2,300 deaths in the U.S. in 2023 and 2024 combined—the highest numbers in 45 years of records, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The dispute unfolds against a broader climate backdrop: heat waves are becoming more frequent and intense, and workers in construction, agriculture, delivery, warehouses and commercial kitchens face some of the highest risks. OSHA has historically relied on a general duty clause to address heat hazards rather than a permanent heat-specific standard. With federal action stalled, the issue is increasingly shifting to states and cities—creating a patchwork of protections that worker advocates say leaves millions exposed.
A Department of Labor spokesperson said in an email: “OSHA is currently reviewing comments from the public hearings on the proposed rule ‘Heat Injury and Illness Prevention in Outdoor and Indoor Work Settings.’ OSHA provides compliance assistance to employers regarding potential workplace hazards, including guidance on how to keep employees safe in the heat.”