Albany Will Again Debate Legislation to Help Workers Battling the Heat
On a recent hot September afternoon in Harlem, Hugo Piedra, an Amazon delivery worker, is moving boxes from trucks to his platform trolleys. The Barcelona jersey beneath his Amazon vest is already soaked with sweat.
The day’s temperature reaches 93 degrees, the hottest recorded in New York City this year. Mr. Piedra’s six-hour shift started at noon.
He recently got a raise, and now makes $17.75 an hour. But he is also seeking another job. “It’s a job so grueling that few people last long,” he said.
Piedra, like thousands of other minimum-wage workers in the city, often works under heat stress. And state legislators will again be considering legislation next year to protect workers from heat.
The bill, known as the TEMP Act, was introduced by Sen. Jessica Ramos, a Queens Democrat, in January. It proposed that when the temperature goes over 80 degrees, employers would be required to offer workers water, along with access to first aid, protective equipment and shade. The bill would also have required that employees get 10-minute breaks every two hours if the temperature is 95 degrees or higher.
The bill didn’t make it out of the Labor Committee last session, and Ramos is planning to introduce it again when the Legislature meets next January.
“Climate change is obviously making our summers a lot hotter,” Ramos said in an interview. “For people who work outside or places that don’t have appropriate air conditioning, it is increasingly difficult.”
Amazon says it has taken steps to protect workers. “Our heat-related safety protocols are robust and often exceed industry standards and federal OSHA guidance,” a spokesperson said in an email. “We already go beyond existing guidance because we know it’s the right thing to do.”
California was the first state to set a standard for outdoor workers, in 2005, after several farmworkers died of heat exposure. A 2021 study found occupational heat-related injuries in California declined by about 30 percent after the standards went into effect.
Other states are paying heed. Colorado, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, Oregon and Washington either have heat standards in place or are developing some. Most of those standards require water, rest and shade. Minnesota also has an indoor standard for heat stress.
New York City workers can find themselves to be particularly vulnerable because the dense urban environment traps heat.
Since record-keeping began in 1895, the city’s average temperature has increased at a rate of 0.3 degrees per decade. The average for the past decade is 1.94 degrees above the historical norm, according to the National Centers for Environmental Information.
That’s what some employees experienced earlier this month, as a heat advisory went into effect for four days in the city.
That made conditions difficult in the kitchen at Mint Masala, an Indian restaurant in Greenwich Village.
The cooking crew there often endures sweltering heat. There’s no air conditioning in their area, so workers prop open the back door to cool things off a bit.
“Restaurants don’t usually install air conditioning in their back kitchens — at least at the four Indian food restaurants I’ve worked at in the past,” said Naresh Malhotra, senior waiter.
Ramos’s bill wouldn’t require air conditioning in hot workplaces like kitchens. Some requirements, such as access to a cool-down room, were deleted from the first draft of the bill.
With the first version, Ramos said, the strategy was to “throw everything but the kitchen sink. Since then, she said, “we need to figure out how we can make the bill possible.”
She singled out United Parcel Service, the shipping giant that recently agreed to install air conditioning in delivery vehicles.
The new version of her bill includes a provision that employers install air conditioning in vehicles they provide to employees for work.
“If the employer has a good heart, they will be doing these things now,” said Ramos. “For eight hours of work a day, it is OK to give the workers a few minutes to stand in the shade, cool down, catch their breath and drink some water. But, we see that’s not the reality.”
