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Transcript — Feeling the Heat: Workplace Safety in a Warming World

July 29, 2025
Economic Opportunities Program

The following transcript comes from our webinar, “Feeling the Heat: Workplace Safety in a Warming World.” For more information, including video, audio, speaker bios, and additional resources, click here.

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Merrit Stüven 00:05 

Good afternoon. My name is Merrit Stüven. I’m an associate director at the Economic Opportunities Program here at the Aspen Institute. It’s my pleasure to welcome you to our conversation today, called “Feeling the Heat: Workplace Safety in a Warming World.” This conversation is part of our Opportunity in America series and during these events we hear from experts, researchers, practitioners, workers and businesses about the changing economic landscape and how we can make sure that the economy works for everyone. Starting off with just a few reminders about our technology. All attendees today are muted. Please use the Q and A button at the bottom of your screen to submit questions and upvote others as questions. Please share your perspectives, ideas, examples or resources related to the topic in the chat, we encourage you to post about this conversation on the social media platform of your choice. Our hashtag is #talkopportunity. If you have any technical issues during the webinar, please message us in the chat, or you can also email us at EOP.program@aspeninstitute.org This event is being recorded, and we’ll share it via email and post it on our website. Closed Captions are also available for the discussion. You can click the CC button at the bottom of your screen to activate them. And now turning to today’s conversation, I’m speaking to you from Washington, DC, where we’ve already had many days of extreme heat this summer, and today we have a heat advisory for up to 109 degrees. People across the country are feeling summers get hotter and hotter every year, and are dealing with the impact of dangerous temperatures in their daily lives, choosing to limit time outside, or taking precautions to keep their homes cool. But one area of life where people have especially limited control over the heat that they’re exposed to is in the workplace and thinking about the impact of weather and climate conditions, the workers who first come to mind for many are those who are mostly outside to perform their jobs: farm workers, postal workers, other delivery workers, road construction and landscaping crews. And these workers are weathering incredibly tough and dangerous conditions. They’re often the first to feel the impact. But when we talk about the impact of extreme heat, we’re talking about many more workers than people tend to realize, workers who spend all day inside, like warehousing, manufacturing workers, kitchen staff and many others who can be just as negatively affected by extreme heat that without proper safety and cooling precautions, turn their indoor workplaces into dangerous heat zones. And all of these workers deserve protections while performing their jobs every day, but especially in harsh environmental conditions, and as federal worker protections across the board are being scaled back, improving and enforcing heat safety standards has fallen on local and state legislators and advocates. Today, we’re honored to have a group of experts and practitioners with us with both deep knowledge and experience on the impact of extreme heat on workers and what we need to do to keep people safe in their workplaces. I’m thrilled to introduce our panel. We’re so grateful to have Dorany Pineda moderating this event. Dorany is a reporter with The Associated Press. She covers Latino communities and how they’re affected by climate and other environmental issues. She’s written extensively on how the changing climate and extreme temperatures are affecting workers and what some policy makers and businesses are doing to protect them. And our wonderful speakers, first, Rosemary Sokas, professor emerita of human science and family medicine at Georgetown University, Sheheryar Kaoosji, Executive Director of the warehouse workers Resource Center. Reyna Lopez, Executive Director of Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste and Jon Esformes, CEO and operating partner at Sunrise Certified Brands. Thank you all so much for being here. And Dorany over to you. 

Dorany Pineda 04:01 

Thank you so much for those introductions, and thank you all so much for being here to talk and learn about the impacts of extreme heat on workers. I want to start with some framing for a conversation today. I started covering climate environmental issues in 2022 as a reporter at the LA Times to help cover California’s historic drought, and I quickly learned that my beat wouldn’t just be about the state’s drinking water supplies. Drought and heat are closely linked. And eventually I also started writing about extreme heat and what that does to people. I learned that he is often called the salient killer, because the impacts it has on the body aren’t always obvious. I learned that heat waves kill more people in the US than tornadoes, hurricanes, floods and other weather disasters combined, and that’s according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. I also. And that heat doesn’t impact everyone equally as we’ll discuss today, outdoor workers who toil in farm fields and gardens and construction sites are most at risk. So are drivers and warehouse workers who often spend hours in hot environments without air conditioning. Black, Latino and immigrant workers are also disproportionately impacted by extreme heat and are less likely to have health insurance from their employer and feel like they can speak out about work conditions. And we’re hearing that’s getting worse with the current administration’s immigration enforcement rates. So if they get heat on this on the job, they’re less likely to seek medical attention because of the medical costs or because they can’t afford to miss hours of work. I want to share an example of a story we did here at the AP about heat and workers. Last year, my AP colleague, Melina walling and I wrote about the dangers of working in greenhouses, and we spoke with greenhouse workers who described extreme humidity and heat that could hike to 115 degrees in the summer. Some described feeling headaches and nausea and seeing yellow and being less productive because it was so hot. Others talked about passing out some of these greenhouses were buzzy startups that touted indoor agriculture as a climate change solution, but they were threatening agriculture workers, and climate change is increasing. That threat across many industries. Climate Science tells us that hot days will get hotter and last longer if humans continue to burn planet warming fossil fuels, and that will have dire consequence, consequences on workers. Studies show that as heat goes up, so do workplace injuries and accidents. A few US states have heat rules to reduce the risks of extreme heat for workers, but there’s still no federal standard to protect most of the workers across the country. The one, the one is in the works. Some employers have taken it upon themselves to safeguard the workers by pushing shifts to earlier later in the day in the summer, when temperatures are cooler. Last year, I learned about a construction company in Texas that gives workers these bands to wear around their wrist that detects signs of overheating. So if it does, it warms, it warns them and advises the worker to rest and hydrate, and the device serves as an early warning system to prevent heat related injuries and illnesses. In this discussion, we’ll be talking about a lot of these things and more, and what we can do to protect workers from heat. So with that, let’s kick it off with some introductions from our panelists. Rosemary. I’m hoping we can start with you. Can you talk a bit about how the issue of extreme heat came to your attention and what the short and long term impacts of heat has on the human body. 

Rosemary Sokas 08:03 

Thank you Dorany, and thank you so much for that outstanding overview. And again, thanks to each person participating, phoning in for your interest and your work on this. So the issue of extreme heat has been around for a very long time, and it grabbed me by the throat 50 years ago, when I was an internal medicine resident at Boston City Hospital, in the intensive care unit during a heat wave in August, we had patient after patient after patient. The whole unit was full of patients with heat stroke. And it’s it’s a tragedy for any preventive death to occur that could have been prevented, but this is a really terrible way to die. The patients all were had coma. They early on developed micro clotting and bleeding. So they’re kind of bleeding diffusely. There is multi system organ failure. The only thing we had was to provide supportive services. We could ventilate them, we could do dialysis, we could support their blood pressure, but it was really their underlying health that allowed them to eventually, potentially walk out of the unit. And we did have people who did walk out of the unit, but sadly, more did not. And I want to fast forward 50 years now, the same circumstances still apply. If you’re lucky enough to get to the hospital, if you’re not, if you don’t die in route, or you’re not found down, then you still have between a 30 and an 80% chance of dying because of these, and it’s based on your pre existing conditions. So there is only one intervention in all that time that’s been developed that shows that really makes a difference, and I’ll talk about that in just a second. But right now, there. Doing research in mice to see if they can reverse some of the brain damage or some of the kidney damage, and so far, nothing in people. So you have this horrible disease that can take people’s lives. Let’s step back just a second and talk about the acute illnesses we’ve known about again for a very long time. Later on, if we have time, we can talk about the chronic information which is now emerging that Dorney alluded to. But right now, the heat rash, heat cramps, heat syncope, which is where you faint, but then you wake up right away, those are all pretty self limited, where you have to get really serious is when you start to have what Dorney was describing in those greenhouse workers, when you have heat exhaustion. Heat exhaustion, you’re already experiencing serious adverse effects. You have a headache, you might have nausea, you might have vomiting, you have extreme exhaustion, and your core body temperature, which the body keeps us pretty close to 98.6 most of the time, is now probably hovering around 100 so what you want to do then is you want to have people know that they should take a break. They should get out of the heat. They should be in a cool area. They should be drinking water, and they should stop their exertion. Because there’s two sources of this heat one comes from inside you. That’s the exertion level that you’re doing, and the other is from the outside, as you all know. So the real problem with heat exhaustion. So people need to know that this is serious, and they need to take care of themselves, because if it gets into heat stroke, heat stroke, by definition, is central nervous system dysregulation. So you do two things, you lose the ability to control your heat, and so you wind up with temperatures of 104105106107108 and you also, you’ve lost your central nervous system cognitive functioning. You’re confused. You don’t know where you are. You’re really kind of maybe not making a whole lot of sense. Or you’re fumbling, or your your gait is a little unsteady and and you cannot help yourself, so you can’t help yourself. You might have coma, you might have seizures, but basically somebody else has to help you now manage that heat stroke, and this is the important part, because the one intervention that actually works is to identify somebody in heat stroke and immediately cool them down as fast as fast as fast as possible in the best of all circumstances, that means an ice bath. And so you want to really and then, of course, you call 911, so you cool them, cool them, cool them externally. Right away. Right away, right away. First aid can save lives. That’s the one intervention that works. So how do you identify heat stroke in others? Because, again, you can’t do it in yourself. So heat stroke in others, you touch somebody and they’re hot and dry. BINGO, BINGO, BINGO, that’s heat stroke. But people need to know that you can still be sweating and be in heatstroke. You can have sweat so much before that you’re just soaking wet, and that could still be heat stroke. The critical piece is the confusion. It’s the central nervous system dysfunction. So who gets heat stroke? There’s kind of two categories, healthy young people, athletes, military recruits, used to get heat stroke. Now they still can. But the military and the sports world have gotten really smart, and they really try to prevent this, very hard. And then workers. So the workers you hear about the ones who really need the job badly, and they’re going to power through no matter what they’re afraid if they stop, or young, totally healthy people who are just trying to prove themselves on the job. So so you can be completely, completely healthy, just pushing yourself too hard and die from heat stroke you. And then there’s the rest of us, basically, so pretty much most of the US workforce. I mean, we all know that the very young and the very old have increased risk, that’s for sure. But then there’s like, a spectrum of other increased risks that many of us have, and many people in the workforce have. So if you’re obese, if you have hypertension, if you have diabetes, if you’re pregnant, if you have any one of a dozen different disease conditions, or any one of 20 or more different medications or drugs or other or other things, those can increase your risk for heatstroke. Now, it doesn’t mean you can’t work. It means you have to take more pay more attention, and the preventive measures really need to be put into place. 

Dorany Pineda 14:42 

Thank you so much for really emphasizing the dangers of extreme heat. Okay, and I think that’s a good pivot to shahari yard to talk about the workers Sheheryar. Can you tell us what sparked the development of warehouse workers Resource Center and the sorts. Of communities that you work with and organize with in Southern California. 

Sheheryar Kaoosji 15:06 

Yeah, thank you for having me so the Southern California area is the the region where about 40% of the goods that enter the United States come in through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. So a huge amount of the freight, the imports that we consume coming through Southern California. We’re based in San Bernardino Riverside counties, which is the counties just east of LA County, just about an hour east of the port, and that’s where a large percentage of those goods are stored and transloaded to go to the rest of the country. So well, over 200,000 people in this region work in the goods movement industry, both in trucking, but also primarily in warehousing. Some actually working with also trains and planes moving those, you know, again, consumer goods that are imported in into Southern California to the rest of the country. So it’s a really key industry and sector of the Inland Empire, the regional economy. It, you know, it’s a driving employer. Amazon is our biggest private employer in our region. It’s actually the biggest private employer in California, the second biggest in the country, and it’s a, you know, the dominant, dominant sector. And if you’re a working class person, like most of the people in our region, a working class person of color, the warehousing industry is where you’re going to end up working. Unfortunately, despite the fact that most of the people working in this sector are moving goods for some of the biggest companies in the world, again, like Amazon, Walmart, every other big retailer you can imagine, unfortunately, a large percent of these, a large percentage of these jobs, you know, somewhere between 30 to 50% are not especially good. We don’t have high uni density, we don’t have a lot of a lot of good job quality, and what we end up with is a lot of workers employed through staffing agencies, a lot of workers employed seasonally, sometimes for years on end, right, quote, unquote, seasonally, with at minimum wage, with little or no benefits. But they keep on coming back because they are, you know, a key part of the way this industry operates. So our organization is an attempt to step into that, to organize workers directly to improve conditions through direct workplace action. You know, taking taking action to demand improved conditions in the wages, but also especially Workplace Health and Safety, which is an area we’ve done a lot of training and education, but also policy across southern California, but across the state, we’ve been able to establish policies to give those staffing agency employees better rights And the same rights that other workers have to establish protections around wage theft, we’ve been able to organize, and especially you know, on this topic, about 10 years ago, when we started dealing with the issue of workplace heat. After a few years of working with Cal OSHA, our state OSHA office, we identified that it really is difficult to enforce indoor heat. There was an indoor outdoor heat standard that was passed in 2006 due to leadership in the the farm worker movement. But indoor workers were still being impacted here in Southern California, where it gets very hot. And so we organized through, you know, organizing through our community, but also with our legislators, to establish an indoor heat standard, not just applying to warehouse workers, but to all indoor workers in California. And that passed in 2016 actually didn’t go into effect until last year, because the the administrative process took so long and so that standard is this is the first summer when that standard is actually being enforced throughout the whole summer. So we’re really trying to keep a track of how that’s playing out, how to make sure that communities employers are complying, make sure that workers know that that is part of their rights now. So it’s a difficult moment, because we know there’s so much fear in our communities. The ICE raids have been devastating across southern California, not just in LA but our area. And the level of fear that it takes to you know that people are dealing with to speak up about their workplace, to speak up about issues around health and safety in general, are already difficult. Now it’s even much more difficult, because we know there’s a hostile, you know, occupying, occupying force, essentially outside that can be sprung upon workers at any time. So it’s an interesting moment. We’re trying to figure out exactly how, how it all plays together, but our focus is on again, protecting our communities, protecting workers in. These warehouses and making sure that they know their rights. 

Dorany Pineda 20:04 

Thank you for that overview, Reyna, I know you work with outdoor workers, primarily in a lot of the things he described about working conditions for warehouse workers are also true for campesinos. Can you tell us about the work pineros en campesinos Del Norte does, and the people that you help organize? 

Reyna Lopez 20:25 

Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much for having me, and thank you to the panel today. So I’m here representing pecun, and we were started by farm workers in 1985 who were just fed up with the working conditions they were experiencing in Oregon, and since then, we’ve organized boycott strikes, large scale campaigns to organize farm workers and make change in systems that improve the quality of the life of farm workers. Agricultural labor is in the top 10 most dangerous jobs in the nation, and that’s because of high rates of lesions, high death deaths reported on the job. And as you can imagine, there’s many issues that come with this right now. A central issue for us is climate, but there’s also compounding issues that that create these conditions, issues like toxic pesticide and herbicide exposure, the lack of immigration status, which you have heard, has had a chilling effect, not just in California but across the entire country, and discrimination, exploitation, sexual harassment, that occurs in much higher rates on work sites in comparison to other industries, but heat and smoke too has become a Central and focal issue for us, and has somehow put us on the front lines of the environmental justice movement. And since 2020 we’ve really decided that this is one of the most strategic priorities for farm workers and for the communities that we serve, and that’s because we have seen days getting hotter, even in Oregon, which is supposed to have this very mild and green, luscious climate, but it came live and direct for us in 2020 when we saw the Labor Day wildfires in 2021 when we had a historic heat dome, and we just kept hearing member after member flagging issues, that they were feeling sick on the job and asked to produce just as much, if not more, things really hit a breaking point for us, and that was when we started to lose people. So we had to take action. And that’s a lot of what I want to share with you all today, especially a little later on in our talk around how we did that, policy wise, in getting some of the strongest heat and smoke rules in the country. 

Dorany Pineda 22:42 

Thank you for that, Reyna, thank you also for mentioning that wildfire smoke is an issue that is so deeply interlinked with heat and we also need better air protections for workers who are exposed to wildfire smoke. Jon, I want to turn it to you. You come with the perspective of an as an employer, if you can talk about your history in the tomato growing industry and the communities in Florida where you operate, 

Jon Esformes 23:11 

Sure, thank you so much, and thank thanks to everybody who’s participating on this panel. I’m honored and grateful to to be here with everybody today. My family, we have been in the produce business since 1920 we were an immigrant family that started by selling watermelons on the streets in New York. And the interesting thing for me as it relates to worker protections is that my great grandfather started selling watermelons because he got sick working in a shoe factory from the floating glue in the early 20th century in New York City, his doctor instructed him to work outside for health reasons, and we ended up in the produce business. So here we are. You know, fast forward 105 years, and we’re in the agriculture space. We I’m myself and my fourth generation in the family business. We farm throughout the southeast. We have farmed extensively in Maryland and Virginia, California, Mexico, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee. We exited California several years ago and exited Virginia and Maryland. So we’re primarily a Southeastern grower. We have a long history of having to face the challenge of farming, harvesting and packing tomatoes, fresh market tomatoes and. Extremely hot conditions. You know, the summers in California when I was growing up, I remember being eight, nine years old, making box tops in a in a packing house in Tracy, California, and it was nothing, if it was 115 or 120 degrees. And the solution back in the late 60s was have a have a glass of water and have a salt pill. I don’t know if anybody here remembers the salt pills from back then, you know, but that that and I was eight or nine years old making Box Tops. So our, our involvement in this, we were in California when he protections were first introduced, we’ve been involved with, you know, the early stages of going ahead and having shade trailers, and building those shade trailers, putting them out In the fields. When we in 2010 partnered with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. We came with a long history and a lot of good things that we were doing as a company, and everything that the Coalition of Immokalee Workers was asking us to do, quite frankly, were all good ideas. So you know, I’m coming at it from a little bit of a different perspective than most, most businesses, and that we have already crossed the the river, so to speak, and embraced creating an environment with our workforce where we work together to go ahead and come up with solutions that, quite frankly, are everybody’s problem. 

Dorany Pineda 26:50

Thank you, Jon for that. And Rosemary, I want to turn it back to you in a discussion about how extreme heat is affecting workers, what did the demographics of the people most at risk look like, and what is the direction that trends are going? Are there injuries happening due to heat that are captured by traditional federal data reporting? 

Rosemary Sokas 27:14 

So again, thank you for that. There’s the demographics I think you laid out very well already, because of the history of racism and broken immigration systems, the people with the worst jobs that have the most high exposures are African American and Latino workers in these really most of the high risk jobs, not all of them, but they disproportionately so their mortality rates are, in fact, higher based on that, and we’ve known we looked at the data that the Bureau of Labor Statistics catches for for for fatalities between 1992 and 2016 there’s a pretty tight relationship between summer temperatures and the number of heat stroke fatalities. We focused more on construction workers, because there’s so many of them in the US, and they have a disproportionate risk, but it was going up significantly, but not exponentially. And then since then, there’s been this interesting report on the general population, where it shows that for the last 10 years, where we’ve broken records with heat. We’re also starting to see, as a population, this gradual increase, actually starting to spike. They did an analysis where, you know, they kind of look for changes in trends, and they found that change in trends. So we know that there’s more. We know that we’re missing a lot. I think Tampa Bay investigative journalists did a study where they looked at the reported heat stroke day deaths in Florida, and they doubled the number the this is not only true for workers, but it’s especially true for workers. But there’s reasons, and we can go into them later, why even the general population, there’s an under count. So there’s an under count in terms of the excess mortality. I did want to do two quick things, if I can just mention that acclimatization is really important, that we that the way our bodies respond to heat is basically two fold. We change the blood flow from our internal organs to the skin, and then the sweat gives us a little evaporative cooling. Now, obviously, if there’s too much heat and too much humidity, that kind of breaks down, and you don’t get that the long term, over a couple of weeks, you can wind up changing the composition and the amount of your sweat and changing some of your cardiovascular function that helps you again. You can’t go infinitely, but you know, it does get you better. But this is why heat waves increase mortality so drastically, and this is why in workplaces, most people, more than half of the people who die of heat stroke die in the first three days a. The job so and one last little point I want to make in terms of, I think, Merit mentioned earlier, the heat index is 109 in DC today. Well, the heat index is great. The heat index takes into account both temperature and humidity. But for workers, it’s not good enough. And I’m going to just ask people to imagine, imagine you’re in a nice park, there’s trees all over the place, there’s a little breeze coming from a lake, and you’re having a walk, and then you step outside, and there’s sunlight on the tar, on the on the asphalt, and you’re really feeling quite different. The heat index is going to be the same for both of those situations, so it’s not helping you determine the risk for the workers. So the workers, as Reyna mentioned, they might be wearing protective gear for pesticide application. They are exerting themselves. There are these other conditions that you have to keep in mind, but at least if you do a wet bulb globe temperature. I want everybody here to know the wet bulb globe temperature is better than the heat index because it includes the solar heat load or a radiant heat from a furnace or whatever, as well as the wind velocity. So those are two things I wanted to mention. But yes, the incidence is going higher, and our ability to count is never good, but for non fatal illnesses and injuries. I mean, you already mentioned that the injuries go up, you know, just all kinds of traumatic injuries go up with the heat. People slip off ladders, all of that, but, but capturing that is really, really hard, and we have very poor data for that. 

Dorany Pineda 31:42 

Thank you, Rosemary for that. I also want to mention the LA Times, a few years ago, did a really great investigative piece, also looking at under reporting of heat related deaths in California. So you talked about a piece, I think in Florida. Rosemary and the reporters across the country are really looking at, you know, what are we missing as we’re collecting this data? That’s great. Reyna, can you talk about how this is affecting the workers you work with in Oregon, and if there are any stories that you’ve heard or know or know about that you’d like to share with us? 

Reyna Lopez 32:15 

Definitely, and as you heard, even with our deep roots and unionization and farm worker organizing climate and extreme weather really shot to the top of the list for us because we were seeing horrific situations right in our backyard, and farm workers becoming the frontline workers when it comes to extreme climate conditions, and that’s because they work outside. But first, I’ll give the example of the historic Labor Day wildfires that burned down entire farm worker cities here in Oregon and later, which was a story that really hit, I think, home for many people, because we got a lot of attention here in Oregon over it was later during the 2021 heat dome, when an indigenous Guatemalan farm worker, who was 36 years old. He he was here saving money to start a little family back in Guatemala with his wife, and they were trying to have a baby. His name was Sebastian Francisco Perez, and his anniversary was just this past July. He passed away because of of heat exhaustion. He was working on a job at a nursery. Nurseries are huge here in the mid Willamette Valley. We have some of the best nurseries in the world here, and this was in a small town of St Paul Oregon. So you know, his preventable death really sparked a lot of action. And there was vigils across the state, led by farm workers, and it also led to the governor, at the time, Governor Kate Brown and state agencies really stepping up and saying, you know, we’re gonna we’re gonna make some changes, and we’re not gonna let these deaths happen again. As we know, farm workers are a predominantly immigrant and migrant workforce. So many speak not only Spanish, but exclusively indigenous languages of Mexico and Guatemala, many other places in Central America. And so when farm workers are outside during the day and it’s extremely hot here in Oregon, we consider 90 degrees hot, I know maybe some of the California folks or the Florida folks, maybe well, but it takes us a while to acclimate. And after a few hours of not having breaks and water and having, you know, reporting dizziness, nausea, being tired and vomiting, I mean, these are all signs that that have been clear and that we had already been hearing about. But once Sebastian passed away, it was really clear that for us, like once this is happening, it’s too late. So for us, prioritizing a healthy and effective workforce was was something at top of mind and and something that collectively, we wanted to ensure. Where we were set up to do here in Oregon. 

Dorany Pineda 35:03 

Thank you for sharing that. Reyna. I also know, you know, communicating heat safety to indigenous workers can be a challenge because of the cultural differences, the language differences, and we there should really be a more concerted effort to ensure that everyone is getting the heat safety information that they need to stay safe. We know it’s hot in the Inland Empire, but we often think of outdoor workers  when thinking of those affected by extreme heat. How are indoor workers being affected? And why aren’t those warehouses putting in ACD? 

Sheheryar Kaoosji 35:39 

So there’s well over 1000 warehouses in our region, you know, 1000s more across the California and the Southwest, and the vast majority of them are not, you know, are not climate controlled. The you know that most of these workers, you know, are working in these facilities that are that are really climate controlled, if they are for the benefit of the product, not the people. Some of them are cold storage, which has their own risks around. You know, working in cold but the the vast majority of these facilities were built to make sure this stuff is taken care of and that the people are second, a secondary thought, if, if any, our focus is on, you know, raising the fact that these, these risks do exist. And I think that’s you’re talking about, the cultural component. I think there’s a cultural component for for all of us. I don’t think heat is seen as a typical or traditional workplace health and safety issue. I think it’s seen as just part of the deal for workers, inside and out, it’s just part of your go to work and you do your thing. And generally, I think the way that heat plays out is a manifestation of our culture in general, right in that we are looked at. We look at heat as something you just you know you deal with, rather than as a risk that you can mitigate, either as a worker or as an employer. Often, what we see is that employers put that impetus, the burden of taking care of yourself, on the worker, rather than taking responsibility for workers, especially in heat, but also in other in other contexts. Rather than saying, you know, we should take responsibility for protecting, protecting folks. And it doesn’t just come down to air conditioning, right? It comes down to giving workers information about the fact they you know, what the what the impacts, what the factors of heat illness, the complicated and sometimes contradictory ways that heat impacts the human body. How to keep an eye out for that, for yourselves, but also for your co workers. Because once you’re just you know, once you’re confused or disoriented by the heat, you’re not the best person to know if I’m impacted by heat, you should be looking out for your co workers. But the way that our society, especially other way our workplaces, are set up, workers are not set up to be looking out for each other. These are temp workers. They don’t necessarily know who they’re working with any given day you’re in one place, one day in another place, another you’re not necessarily getting trained in the same way that you know you’re you know consistently because you’re a temp, you’re just kind of thrown in. You’re afraid of speaking up or afraid of looking out for other people, because you’re trying to hang on to your job. I’m just a temp. I don’t know if I’ll be here tomorrow. I’m just going to mind my own business, right? All these kind of anti social components of our American society that manifest most deeply in the workplace make it harder for us to deal with this issue, and make it more likely that you’ll just keep doing your thing and doing your job, and if somebody you know passes out next to you, that’s their problem. And that’s again, like, exacerbated by the way that these these workplaces are set up. So what we try to do again is try to, like, rebuild those relationships, engage with each other about about these risks, but also remind employers that they’re ultimately responsible for the workers inside of their workplaces. Before we had an indoor standard, workers, employers were still responsible for what happened to their workers, whether there was an explicit language in the state you know, code saying hate is one of the things you should be looking out for, and that’s true across the country. Other states don’t have indoor heat standards. The employer is still responsible for what’s going on inside of those workplaces, and still needs to provide extra breaks, water, etc, when it is hot. We know that. You know, there was an effort starting in the previous administration to establish a heat standard at federal OSHA, that’s almost certainly out the window. But again, employers are still responsible for those conditions. 

The fact is that unless those workers are organized in some way, it’s very rare for that to happen, and that’s our focus is, is getting together, you know, people to speak collectively, whether they have a union or not, to. Be able to stand up for each other and look out because that we do see that as like the only real way for workers to be able to speak up and be able to protect themselves when when they do so. 

Dorany Pineda 40:13 

And Jon, you know, we’re hearing about the human toll that he takes on workers, and that also impacts business. Talk to us about the health and well being of of your workers and why that’s important to you. And yeah, someone who’s running an industry? 

Jon Esformes 40:32 

So for us, as I mentioned before, first of all, Rosemary, thank you so much for talking about the feels like temperature, because that is so important. What the what the temperature gage says outside, is really meaningless. It’s really about what does the temperature actually feel like? Because that’s what that’s what we have learned through our experience is the most important thing to pay attention to, to talk about the impact of business. You know, there are numbers there, right? So when you start, especially in agriculture for us, where we’re typically quite a distance away from any emergency services or hospitals or clinics. You know, anytime someone gets sick in a field, listen, that’s somebody loading somebody up in a pickup truck and taking them to an emergency room. That costs money, that costs time. I’m talking about the economic side. We’ll talk about the human side in a moment. The for us, our experience since 2010 has been one of recognizing that agriculture has for millennium, been the the work has been done by the most vulnerable people in the world. And so in 2010 when we decided that we were going to partner with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, it was we weren’t done by partnering. We were just beginning the journey together that we were going to continue to uncover and learn more and do better. This work is never done, right? So for us, partnering with them, was at the baseline, creating an environment where there was communication taking place, the immediate ROI on that was we saw within six months that our human resource department became a trusted asset of the business, rather than the phone never ringing because people were afraid to call because they didn’t Trust the business. They didn’t trust the company to do the right thing. As it relates to heat and heat illness, I’m as I’m as concerned as everybody here about the people that lose their lives to heat no question about it. What I’m more concerned about is the progressive illnesses that people are developing as a result of repeated heat illness. And this is something that has a huge, huge toll on not just my business, potentially on my business, but our communities, our economy all the way through this is no different than any other progressive disease, call it alcoholism or anything else that, over time, drains the resources of society. Heat illness is a progressive disease that gets exacerbated by repeated exposure. And I cannot tell you how many agricultural workers I have heard about and know about who, after years of working on farms and repeated heat exposure and heat illness are now on dialysis, who are living with, you know, kidney failure, who are living with organ diseases, who are, you know, have significant medical issues as a result. Now that’s at the end of their career. Along that path, they have had periods of time where they experienced loss of work, where they’re no longer contributing workers. Why? Because they were sick for on and off for 10 years, and now they’re missing work for three or four months. That impacts their family, that impacts. Impacts businesses, that impacts all of us. Those are the economic side. I mean, at the end of the day, this is about human rights. This conversation for me is, as a business owner, my number one responsibility, yes, I’m supposed to make a profit. I’m also supposed to go ahead and take care of the resources that enable me to make a profit. One of those resources of the folks that honor us with their work, creating a safe and fair workplace has made us a more profitable company. Has made us a Workplace of Choice for farm workers, and that would be my message, quite frankly, to any farmers out there who are considering implementing not voluntary type of programs, but involuntary, mandated type of programs internally in their companies. By having that partnership with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, I participated in 2023 with Secretary Vilsack on a panel about the farm worker crisis and the the labor crisis that the United States is experiencing. And quite frankly, I held my hand up and said, You know, I’m embarrassed to say that throughout covid, we never experienced that shortage of workers because we had done the work to become a Workplace of Choice in a challenging time. I think that that’s a huge, huge value to any business, to be a place where people actually feel like their work is valued and that they are safe. Now, I don’t want anybody to think here that I’m holding us up as like some paragon of purity and that we’re perfect. Over here, we are learning and committed to doing things better every year. 

Dorany Pineda 47:08 

Thank you, Jon, for giving us an overview of the work that you’re doing in your business and the economic impact it has when you’re not ensuring the health and well being of your workers. Rena, you talked a bit about the laws that have been passed in Oregon since Sebastian Francisco Perez died because of heat years ago. I’m hoping you can talk about what the challenges are of enforcing heat standards. We know that even when heat standards exist, it’s difficult to make sure that they’re actually being followed and workers are being protected. 

Reyna Lopez 47:49 

Yes, thank you for that question, and thanks again to the panel. I’m really inspired by everybody’s stories and everything you’re working on. So after Sebastian’s death, our governor at the time, Kate Brown, issued some emergency rules, and then that eventually became permanent rules and really very common sense measures. Right after for us, it was access to shade and cool drinking water increased paid breaks after 80 and 90 degrees, and there’s some some tearing that’s involved with the different as the heat gets higher, additional heat protections as well at 90 degrees, which include a buddy system, more communication between the supervisors and the employers and also employees, and also requiring employers to to measure heat and humidity levels in indoor structures too, not just outdoor structures like you know, and so it also employers must provide annual trainings as well as acclimatization plans. They have to have a heat illness prevention plan and an emergency medical plan. But it leaves out a few critical things to that that we wanted, and some of it is that the the tiered rest system is a little bit confusing. And as you can imagine, the fact that people are traveling from site to site does make it difficult to implement some of the the break schedules. So that part has been challenging, also it is the weakest part of the rule, so we want to make sure that that gets stronger in the future. But that has been a bit challenging. In addition to some of the things that were left, that were left incomplete, was specifically some of the labor housing, the farm worker labor housing, aspects of it there is, there was an effort to get some protections for farm worker labor, housing in the rules that we just did with OSHA. And while we got something and we think it’s progress, there is a lot more to do. In addition, we are really proud of the role that we’re playing to try to heal some of the relationships. Between our members and state agencies like OSHA, and we’ve been in a lot of communication and doing a lot of that work, but we are still seeing that folks are hesitant to report violations, and that’s due to workplace retaliation or even just history, right, even when the agencies are doing the the best work they’ve ever done, right decades of slow or no response from the agencies. Are things that people are trying to, you know, kind of get get through and and that acknowledgement of the past and bringing us into a newer system in the future is has been really good. But I think that, like in terms of that one, when farm workers are doing well, it means that other, other workers, outdoor workers, are getting to benefit from it too. And that part, we’ve been really proud to say that this was something that farm workers let but it’s it’s something that everyone is getting to to, to also get support from. Because, you know, when we’re doing well by one worker, a lot of workers also are able to benefit. And I would say that even now, it’s been a mixed result in terms of what we’re seeing with the rules and how they’re being implemented, I think that overall, what we’ve heard being reported is that it’s generally been a positive change, and that there are a lot of elements that folks are trying to implement, but at times, not everything is being implemented, and we’re also finding that there’s still a lot of workers that don’t know about the rules, and employers who don’t have a strong understanding of the rules or might be ignoring the rules. But I would say that we have seen improvements overall and in terms of some of the increasing challenges we’re seeing now too. I mean, there’s always something new, it feels like every single year, and in the northwest, we saw some mix of humidity, too, and it brought a different type of exhaustion, I think, in the workplace, for folks. So yeah, these are just some of the elements that we’re looking at. And we’re continuously trying to figure out how to how to get folks to understand the rules better, how to be set up, to to implement them, because they are additional things we’re asking of people, but overall, it’s we’ve seen changes, and also it’s been mixed. 

Dorany Pineda 52:25 

Yeah, and a quick follow up question, what do you think we could do, or government, government agencies could do to re rebuild that trust with youth workers? You mentioned a lot of people don’t feel safe. You know reporting he related illnesses or work conditions, because they just like, don’t trust government agencies to respond quickly or to pay attention to their concerns. 

Reyna Lopez 52:54 

A lot of that work is actually happening now, and there’s been some really good work to be able to mend that relationship, and people are feeling a lot more comfortable making reports, especially when they have the option to be a confidential report and that information guaranteed to not be shared with anybody. But we are doing this work that we’re calling a strategic enforcement model in Oregon. We’re working very closely with our agencies to be able to have a better flow of communication, starting these industrial groups that really focus on the needs of that particular sector, and identifying ways that we can be kind of a force multiplier, where it’s not just the agency that’s doing all of the information collecting, but that there’s a lot more information sharing that we can do as unions, that we can do as worker centers, or even as the individuals on the site that can, that can be shared with the agency to be able to really bring changes compliance and even justice, in some cases, to workers who are experiencing issues at the workplace. So it’s happening in real time, and changing systems takes more than than a year. So so we’re doing it now and and I’m really happy to see that Oregon is really taking that seriously on the national side of things. You know, there’s a lot going on on the national side, folks aren’t as willing, I think, right now, to share even a little bit of information with the with the federal government, due to the the aggression, I guess, towards the immigrant community. So I think that would be a different story. But here in Oregon, we’re really seeing some positive changes there. 

Dorany Pineda 54:40 

That makes me really happy to hear thank you for elaborating, elaborating on that. Sheheryar, you know, similarly, what has your organization been doing on the policy front, and how does organizing play a role in making progress? 

Sheheryar Kaoosji 54:55 

So yeah, so we had a similar situation. Situation where we, when we were first organizing in some Walmart warehouses in 2011 2012 we came across some workers, one worker in particular, Domingo blancas, who was at a Walmart third party warehouse of a warehouse operated by a third party, but moving goods for big companies like Walmart, where he fell ill, and I think it was indicative of kind of some of the systems I mentioned that make it difficult for workers to find justice. He was employed by a staffing agency. Felt ill, went to the manager of the warehouse, who told him, Well, you don’t work for me, so you have to go wait for the staffing agency manager. He waited in the break room, and, you know, for hours on end while he was again, like, you know, feeling these, these impacts of heat illness. It was only until the next day when his son, who also worked in that same warehouse, was able to take him to, you know, to get treatment. And he almost, he almost died in the hospital from the the impacts of this heat illness. So he basically, you know, had to wait over 24 hours to to get kind of any kind of relief, because he was afraid of speaking up. He wasn’t sure what to do. He was disoriented, and because they were kind of playing that game whereas, well, well, you know, you don’t work for me. Go to the warehouse. The warehouse said, Well, you don’t work for me. Go to the staffing agency, and again, the the law says that both parties actually do have responsibility to the worker, but it’s it’s easier said than done, and those are the kind of situations that we see again and again in these kinds of workplaces where workers are contingent, often immigrant workers who you know are afraid to speak up until you know they’re really in a difficult situation. That complaint that we actually filed a complaint with Cal OSHA at that point, which you know went to was it was appealed. There was a whole negotiation. There’s a whole set of court cases over whether, you know, whether the indoor heat, whether, whether heat was something that the Cal OSHA had authority to to, you know, to regulate. So it was over five years in the courts. So by 2016 we and our partners at WorkSafe, who were litigating this issue, along with Cal OSHA, said, Well, you know, we need to adjust the law right? The law isn’t applying the way it should. And our state senator here in California, Connie Leyva, took on this issue as an issue, because it wasn’t just in that workplace, but also she was previously with Food and Commercial Workers, retail workers who work inside of indoor facilities, who are loading and filling up the grocery stores. They actually turn off the air conditioning at night when the customers aren’t there, and then the people were loading the grocery stores in the deserts here in California are working in the heat even though they’re in a grocery store. So she saw the same issue happening in her union before she became a state senator. So similarly, we saw that an opportunity for not just to engage around the warehouses, but around all indoor workers, because there’s other sites where there’s, you know, machines, right, that create ambient heat inside of the workplace a variety of different situations. We want to make sure that we’re working in solidarity with workers across the economy, not just people in the warehouses and establish this policy. And again, the key thing there is it took almost 10 years for that policy to go into effect. Cal OSHA obviously had to deal with covid and, you know, many other things that they were dealing with, but the average OSHA standard does take about a decade, sometimes up to two decades, to actually go through the process and go into effect, and all the OSHA standards that were in process are, again, probably out the window at this point at the federal level. So that’s all to say, our focus over these years, when the policy wasn’t in effect, was to organize, and we still think that is the strategy, is to bring workers together to speak up in the workplace in a collective manner about what’s going on, to demand water, to amend breaks, to demand that they’re that they’re, you know, they and their co workers received adequate training, and we’ve seen that that is the most important thing. If you file a Cal OSHA complaint, the agency has six months. It usually takes six months to actually determine and cite the employer, so it’s inevitably winter. By the time that actually happens, we need to make changes in real time when these things are happening. And what we found is that direct action in the workplace, but also support from community organizations like ours and community partners who can come and put pressure on employers can make real difference in real time and when, when workers do, you know this, in collective manner, they can get employers to change their practices pretty quick, to provide extra breaks, to make sure the water is there. I think it is the kind of thing that when workers do that and. It doesn’t just impact the handful, or, you know, couple dozen people who take that action. It impacts everybody, right? Every in the workplace, they Oh, I can, I can take that break. Oh, I can have that water, right? And so that that really leads to the workers, you know, feeling that solidarity and ability to to support each other again, like we were not in all 1000 warehouses, not anywhere close. And most, you know, most of the workers in this in our region or across our state, don’t have organizations or unions that they can work with at this port point, unfortunately. So we, we also know that agencies like calish are highly understaffed. Other states are even worse off than us, and so it’s going to take, you know, not just government agency engagement and popular education, which has happened in California, but also direct engagement in the community. So it’s not just about having the policy. It’s not just about hoping that Cal OSHA shows up, but it’s about educating our communities as much as we can. The other thing I would note is that, you know, it’s hot out after work too. And our worker, the workers we organize, tend to, you know, live in, you know, low and low income or working class communities. Their housing is necessarily air conditioned. People live in trailers, right? People live close to the freeways. So they go out, you know, they come home from work, and then are in a work, in a home that’s also not air conditioned, and so that heat kind of just retains throughout the week, throughout the work week, and compounds. So that just leads to people even more being more kind of endangered. So it’s, you know, again, systemic. It’s not just about, you know, the one workplace or another, it’s about these systems that that make it more difficult for folks to to be protected. So we do see, you know, like broad based collective action as part of the solution, not just around this issue, but also related things like pace of work, right, like wages and other other aspects of what makes these jobs difficult and dangerous jobs. 

Dorany Pineda 1:02:00 

Thank you for mentioning that it’s a systemic problem and mentioning that a lot of these workers don’t find respite from the heat when they go back home. They also live in communities that don’t have shade or parks, and they don’t really have the option to go to the park and find a tree to just cool down and and relax. So thank you for for pointing that out. Jon, you talked about some of the standards that you’ve implemented in your business to protect your workers from heat. Can you talk about, you know, some others, and what some of the outcomes have been, the kind of feedback you’re getting from your workers? 

Jon Esformes 1:02:38 

Sure, sure. I and Reyna, thank you so much for outlining what Oregon has done as a state. Are in the Fair Food Program partnership with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, those are the those are many of the enforceable standards that are implemented within the program. Speaking, I do want to speak real quickly to the role of government agencies in being able to assist workers and, quite frankly, businesses and industry in doing a better job in a warming world. The government is not positioned to conduct the enforcement and implement the enforcement that’s needed. It just isn’t. Now, there are some states that do a better job than others, but no state that I’ve ever operated in is in a position to do the job. We’ve experienced that throughout the southeast and quite frankly, the worker driven social responsibility model that we are a partner in for us has been the most effective way to address those human rights issues, whether it is creating a safe workplace from Sexual harassment and physical violence to intimidation, wage theft, any of the other issues, human trafficking. Those are all issues that we have sought to address crimes, quite frankly, that we have sought to address through the worker driven social responsibility model. And I love the expression force multiplier, because through that partnership, we in effect, have deputized every worker and enabled every worker to participate in making sure that the environment that they’re working in is safe and fair to everybody. We’ve implemented a series of protocols, starting with education through our onboarding process, two week acclimatization, every time we start a new worker, also in a new area. So we go from South Florida to Central Florida to South Georgia. And then we go up to the mountains of Tennessee. Well, these are all very different climates. Get to the mountains of Tennessee during the summer, and you’re coming from Central Florida, you may feel like, my goodness, this is heaven. This is a summer vacation. We’re 10 degrees cooler. We’re also 3000 feet higher, you know. So it’s, there’s a whole lot of different things going on that happened to the body, as Rosemary was outlining. So we, we have an accurate acclimatization process. We operate based off of a feels like temperature. We have mandatory breaks every two hours. These are mandatory breaks every two hours at 90 degrees, at 100 degrees, that break goes to every hour. And at 105 we stop working. Everybody goes home. We not only have water, but we also have electrolyte water on every bus, on every truck, electrolyte, I cannot tell you how important and what a difference maker it was to provide electrolyte water versus just plain water to our workforce. Cool water is great, but what is happening to the body needs fortification in a heat environment. I’m not a doctor, but I listened to a doctor, and they told us, make sure you’ve got electrolyte water out there. The education piece is huge, right? So making sure that people understand that what they eat and what they drink before work and after work will impact their experience and on a hot day is a huge, huge piece. We have a large number of HOA workers, so we are dealing with a lot of workers who are coming in from Guatemala, from southern Mexico, from villages down there, and they get to the United States, and maybe it’s their first or second time here, and the experience of, you know, readily being able to get a Red Bull somewhere, and thinking that that is hydration and going to energize them is totally counter to what is actually going to do to the body. So educating our workers so that they understand and begin begin to get the edge the understanding of the role that they can play in protecting themselves in a heat environment, the buddy system is the number one thing, right? So for us working on farms, we’re not in a 200,000 square foot warehouse, we’re on 1000 acre farm, and people are spread out all over the place. We can’t have managers everywhere. So we have a buddy system where at certain temperatures, at 90 degrees, everyone is buddied up, generally speaking, once we hit 90 degrees, even if we drop back down, if the temperature, those people who started working together we’ll continue working together, and they monitor each other, and they take care of each other. We’ve been able to mitigate a large number, what used to be a significantly larger number and percentage of our workforce that would either be sick the next day, not feeling well at some point during the day, and lower that percentage significantly. We also, anytime someone doesn’t feel well or their buddy instructs them to stop working and take a break that’s paid break. That’s paid time off. Go sit down, get some electrolyte water. That’s what we we require. We also make sure that we always have a nice chest with towels in it. As you mentioned, Rosemary we we looked to the Marine Corps to, you know, what did they do to go ahead and help someone when they were in emergency situation? Because we’re anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour and a half from a clinic or a hospital in an emergency. So we didn’t, you know, we needed to be able to triage someone, if, God forbid, they found themselves in that situation. It’s a cumulative there’s no magic bullet to curing and preventing, preventing and curing heat stress. What there is a cumulative series of actions. And if you put all these together while we’re not going to eliminate it, because there is competition amongst farm workers, either with themselves because of piece rates or with their co workers, and who’s going to have the biggest check on a Friday night and all that kind of stuff that goes on and in the workplace, we are going to lower it for sure, but there has to be. This can’t be. It doesn’t work in a voluntary world. And it’s one of the I would be remiss if I did not mention and bring up that there are an awful lot of social responsibility programs out there right now that are talking to this issue and other issues like this from the perspective of voluntary participation that not how any of this works, right? If we want something like this to actually work, a business has to make the decision that they are going to participate in a program and deal with the fact that someone may call and make a complaint and it doesn’t go away. It just doesn’t get you know, you have to fix the problem. So we’re, we’re very, very big advocates of, I don’t want to call it involuntary programs, but, well, I don’t believe in voluntarily participating in heat mitigation programs. There’s too much room for mistakes to be made and for people in one area of the business to not be doing that, to not be participating. So by for me as a business owner, the number one message to any other business owner is that I’m about 99% sure of how I’m going to behave every day as I go down the list of my management team and get closer and closer to our workers, I become less certain as to the implementation of our SOPs. So that’s just human nature. I mean, people don’t work as hard on a Tuesday as maybe they did on a Monday. I don’t know what it is, but from my perspective, by having this involuntary program where we have an SOP standard operating procedure, it is non negotiable. It is how we do things, and if reports come from the field, either directly to our HR department or to the Fair Food Program that breaks didn’t happen. Then there are write ups. There are write ups of managers. There are write ups of senior management, whatever it is that needs to be done to correct the issue. 

Dorany Pineda 1:12:57 

Thank you, Jon, for elaborating on the work that you’re doing on your farm. Rosemary, I want to turn to you if you can share any examples of initiatives or communities that have really done a good job of protecting workers from heat. 

Rosemary Sokas 1:13:13 

Well, I think Jon just presented an outstanding, you know, example of what people can do and and I also have comments on on what Reyna and Sheheryar were talking about in terms of the worker engagement as well as the management commitment. So those are critically important pieces the in general, in large scale organizations, the military has done a really good job. And sports have done a good job overall, implementing prevention when there was an acute need, where everybody recognized the problem. And just to give you an example, globally, in the United throughout the world, the military tracks heat related illness. They have seen, well, everybody else is seeing this increase, the spike in the last 10 years. They’re actually, in the last five years, seeing a decline in heat stroke. They’re seeing an increase in heat exhaustion, which you don’t really want to have more heat exhaustion. But what that really means is people are recognizing it. They’re taking care of it earlier. So that’s also a positive sign. So those are and then there are high performing industries. I think Jon has given a ton of examples of the engineering controls. The electrolyte addition to the water is also good for flavoring sometimes. And there are some flavored popsicles that have some of the electrolytes in them. So there’s a lot that really get done? Well, I want to give two quick examples about the other end of the spectrum where you can really intervene and prevent these terrible deaths. I also want to mention thank you for the Chronic Disease piece, because there’s a lot there we can talk about later. But, but the the. Uh, the two examples I’d like to give are la isla Foundation and the Deepwater Horizon example. So the La Isla Foundation, la isla in Nicaragua, was an area where this whole business about kidney failure really came to a head. These were 30 and 40 year old men who had worked really hard cutting cane. They had a lot of dehydration, chronically, chronically, lots of even to the point of muscle breakdown. These are all, you know, very thin, very wiry, very hard working individuals pushing themselves in a piece rate system and and wound up with no kidneys by the time they’re 40. And it was a it was an international scandal. There are other pockets throughout the globe where this has been reported. And so la isla Foundation was created. They went into Nicaragua, found a high, high road employer who was willing to collaborate with them. They implemented and tested. So they did pre and post shift urine analysis to kind of see how the kidneys were doing. And at the beginning, they were finding 80% of the workers had some evidence of abnormality, even when they started with the water, rest shade. So eventually, what they did, they did away with the piece rate system. They did the mandatory, the way Jon is talking, where you have to rest, you’re not just encouraged to rest you and and they did it so well that over time, they got to the point where there was less than 1% of the people showing any kind of urine abnormalities over the course of a shift. And The striking thing that happened was so these people are now working, maybe in the direct sunlight, with a lot of energy, six hours total, rather than nine hours total, because of all the different rest breaks and the water and the shade and the cooling, so they’re doing less work. But the productivity actually went up. The tonnage of cane cut went up significantly. And so they were able to demonstrate that not only could they prevent this terrible disease from occurring, but that, in fact, as you’ve heard repeatedly, when you’re when you’re taking care of your workforce, you have a more productive workforce. And there’s there’s laboratory studies that will show that people, after a certain temperature simply just can’t do physiologically, the work. So the second example is from the Deepwater Horizon. That was the tragedy where British Petroleum contaminated the entire Gulf. Killed 11 workers in that accident and really devastated the economy in the states that surrounded the Gulf. So they had a public disaster relationship, among other things. And so what they did was they had to hire clean up workers for all the oil that spilled on those beaches, and it’s the middle of summer and it’s stinking hot. And what they did was they hired the displaced workers. So they hired and they had a lot of encouragement from OSHA and from NIOSH. And again, NIOSH does these work rest cycles that the military developed. So really, going to the Marines is the, is a is a good way to do it. And so what happened was the they had medical clearance not to say you can work or you cannot work. So these are all the fishermen, the shrimp boats, the hospitality. This is in the Gulf area. So you’ve got people with obesity, with hypertension, with diabetes. I mean, it’s not like this is a totally healthy workforce, that you can say, oh, you can’t work or you can work. It’s not like the military that way. So they had the medical examinations. They were told who needed a little more climatization time? Who needed a little more rest break time? These people are wearing protective gear in this hot weather because they’re picking up oil and all of that. And they had water, rest, shade, really, really mandatory. They had these work rest cycles that were developed by the military and by NIOSH that got to the point where they didn’t stop work when it got to really high levels. What they did was they had people working 15 minutes and then resting in the coolness water replenishment for 45 minutes. So they had 1000s of workers. They didn’t lose anybody to heat stroke. So even with the, you know, the the typical US population, you can prevent heat stroke if you’re serious about wanting to prevent heat stroke. So those, those are the examples I would give again, a shout out to to worker engagement and to worker participation in all of in all of these activities and in keeping the government, kind of on its on its toes. I I do have a question. Question for the one employer in the in the panel, if, if that’s possible, which is whether government regulation helps level the playing field a little better, or whether it’s really not all that helpful. 

Jon Esformes 1:20:13 

I, shall I answer that? We’ve engaged with government where we could, obviously, I’m farming in Florida here, so we have failed repeatedly to get heat regulations on the books. Ultimately, though, I years ago, after we had years ago, back in 2016 I think it was, we had implemented an anti physical and sexual violence program in our company and through the Fair Food Program. And I was on a panel at UCLA law school, and there were a lot of the wannabe lawyers in the audience. And so one of the questions of the panel was, you know, what new regulation do we need? And I kind of lost my mind there for a moment, and I might have used some words that weren’t appropriate for UCLA Law School panel, but I basically said that this is a crazy question, because we don’t have the capacity to enforce the laws that are on the books right now. And so I always look at, when I look at regulation, what I’m interested in is, what is the capacity to enforce a law? Because when we can’t enforce sexual anti you know, rape is illegal, sexual harassment is illegal when these things can’t be enforced, these laws can’t be enforced. What is new regulation going to do? 

Rosemary Sokas 1:21:50 

And just real quick in response. I mean, I think both Reyna andSheheryar, you know, have examples where with worker organizations, you know, you can’t you have, you know, maybe the ability to call to the attention in a limit it granted. It doesn’t cover every single person in in the in the field, but they’re there. That kind of organization, worker organization, can actually facilitate the identification of problems and the enforcement aspect, I think so. One last little idea. 

Jon Esformes 1:22:25 

I like the idea, however, it takes too long for government to respond. Yeah. And in the agriculture space, when laws are being broken, whether it’s human trafficking, violence or inappropriate behavior around heat, lives are lost. Waiting for legislation. 

Dorany Pineda 1:22:50 

Thank you for that. We have about seven minutes left. Was hoping to get some kind of final closing remarks from all of you. Keep it to 30 seconds, you know what’s next for your organizations and Jon to you. You know what should other businesses and farmers be doing to protect their workers? 

Jon Esformes 1:23:16 

Everything I mean. My message to farmers is, engage with your workers. You have to be I’m as a farmer. I am in a boat, rowing the boat gets gets moving a lot better when everyone is in the boat, rowing together. So that’s the position we’ve taken as a farming organization, that everyone who honors us with their work is rowing in the boat together, and the way we win the race is by rowing together. The one thing that I would leave everybody with this is from the Talmud, and this has informed a lot of our processes and thinking as it relates to worker driven social responsibility. Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly now, love mercy now, walk humbly. Now. You’re not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. This is a process creating a safe and fair workplace is a process. Given the history of the world and the relationship between business and workers, there are some quick things we can do, but it’s never ends. We’re always learning how to do things better. 

Dorany Pineda 1:24:37 

Thank you, Jon. Reyna, 30 seconds. 

Reyna Lopez 1:24:40 

Thank you both. Yes, so there’s two big things I wanted to shout out. One, we’re supporting Congresswoman Salinas is farm worker disaster relief act at the federal level, and that is a continuation of work that we have been doing to make sure that farm workers are able to get some financial support when they have to. This a day due to disasters and extreme conditions. Also, Senator Merkley is pushing for the farm worker smoke and heat Protection Act, which will bring in OSHA standards. It will require PPE so that farm workers can be protected during smoky conditions. And then here in Oregon, we are going to be pushing in 2027 our farm worker Standards Board, and it’s our first Well, this time, it would be second. We just lost this, this battle in the legislature, but to bring sectoral bargaining to Oregon, and it would really allow for farm workers to have a seat at the table and really improve employer and labor relations and build those standards together every every couple of years, be able to set training that we need for our farm workers, and we feel like it would be a really big game changer in those relationships. 

Dorany Pineda 1:25:54 

Thank you. Sheheryar? 

Sheheryar Kaoosji 1:25:58 

Right near right now in Southern California, I think we’re in a moment when people are taking responsibility and taking into our own hands our safety. We’re not depending on the government. We’re not in a place where we can trust a whole lot of institutions. And we are, you know, using that moment to organize ourselves and our communities. Obviously, indoor heat isn’t the first and most urgent thing in the minds of most people in our communities right now, but it’s it’s an opportunity where people are coming together to support each other, to take care of each other in really powerful and empowering ways. And we’re looking at an opportunity to use that building that we’re doing in resistance to ice in Southern California to also remind each other of how to take care of each other at work. So we’re organizing people across warehouses, including Amazon warehouses, in Southern California, to take those kinds of actions and stand up for each other. 

Dorany Pineda 1:26:55 

Thank you and Rosemary, last thoughts from you? 

Rosemary Sokas 1:26:59 

Takeaways, yeah, well, thank you. And really, thanks. And I want to kind of emphasize what both Reyna and Shahara were saying earlier about housing being important, that you can’t send people into a hot environment at home and expect them not to become ill from the heat. The chronic diseases that occur with are not only kidney disease, but people who survive heat stroke and perhaps even heat exhaustion wind up with increased risks for cardiovascular disease, heart attack strokes, as well as renal disease and all cause mortality. So it’s not ending with the acute disease. The Chronic stuff is really important. What I would say is that you’ve already heard from Oregon and California where they’ve got the, you know, probably California’s is the best, most comprehensive of the heat standards. I would suggest that even they don’t meet what the International Labor Organization recommends even for low and middle income countries, which is that you and some of them have some of these elements, but, but in addition to the planning and training and implementation and the specific triggers for water, rest, shade and the temperature of the water and all of that you need and first aid you need to have, additionally, I would like to see what the ILO recommends, which is the wet bulb globe temperature. I would like to see a simple and focus on acclimatization and on rest break cycles that is more serious, that stops piece rate systems during that time, and perhaps just gets rid of piece rate systems, but at least during the acclimatization period and the work rest cycles, and that the work rest cycles have, you know, more more rest in them, really, according to what the science from the military and NIOSH have said. Finally, what I would suggest is that, again, the ILO recommends medical clearance provisions. Nobody has that. They expect people to have an one hour training and then somehow or other communicate what their potential risks are without breaching medical confidentiality to their supervisors, which is impossible, that you can have a very simple, very straightforward this has been done in different places where it has been successful, you Have a questionnaire that people can self complete. If there’s literacy or language problems you have, somebody from the clinic who goes into a room reads it out loud, people can tick off yes or no, you know, as they’re sitting around the clinic, staff collects the forms. The clinician finds if anybody’s got a problem, they need to have a face to face evaluation. Can then tell them, Well, you need to manage this condition a little bit differently, or I need to write you a note for your employer so that you can have maybe a little bit more it’s not to say you can’t do the job. It’s to say you need a little bit more acclimatization, or you need a little bit of. Um, different rest cycles, and to make sure that all of these things are really incorporated, where you consider the exertion, you consider the other exposures, and and, and try to maintain prevention as much as possible for the individuals involved. 

Dorany Pineda 1:30:23 

Thank you rosemary and thank you all so much for sharing your insights and expertise. This was a really eye opening conversation. Merrit. I’ll turn it over to you for closing remarks. 

Merrit Stüven 1:30:34 

Thank you so much Dorany, and thank you so much as well to our wonderful panelists for sharing your time and your expertise with us, and especially thank you for the work you do every day to improve working conditions. Thank you as well to our audience for joining today. I’m sorry we ran out of time for Q and A, but we will do our best to incorporate the questions that we got into our event. Follow up email, so keep an eye out for that, and please join us again for our next event, the Future of Equal Opportunity, for which we have an incredible panel lined up, including the honorable Stacey Abrams that will be on September 4, at 2pm Eastern. And a huge thank you to our team at the Economic Opportunities Program at Aspen, especially to Maxwell Johnson, who played a key role in shaping today’s event, and to Matt Helmer, our director of job quality and worker well being. And a big thanks, as always, to our comms team, to Nora, Frances and Tony. Thanks to Colleen, to Architex for the production of today’s event, and to our Executive Director, Maureen Conway, for her leadership. And we’ll see you next time. 

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