Credit: Ron DeSantisRon DeSantis, a far-right politician, former presidential candidate, and current governor of Florida, is attempting to defend the bill he signed into law banning worker protections during a historic heat wave, further defying critics who claim he doesn’t care about laborers fainting from heat stroke.
Since the collapse of his campaign against former President Donald Trump for the 2024 GOP nomination, Governor DeSantis has returned to Florida and has been signing legislative bills into law at a furious pace.
Among other things, he has signed laws authorizing the penalization of a single balloon, forbidding lab-grown meat to protect the powerful cattle ranching lobby, and, of course, killing black bears without any evidence of a single human death caused by a bear in Florida.
Of all the bizarre laws that Ron DeSantis has signed in the last few months, none have garnered as much national attention as HB 433, which forbids local governments from passing legislation protecting workers from extreme heat and requiring water breaks, as well as laws requiring the minimum wage to be raised above Florida’s current $12 an hour.
The text of the law specifically says:
A political subdivision may not establish, mandate, or otherwise require an employer… to meet or provide heat exposure requirements not otherwise required under state or federal law.
“Heat exposure requirement” means a standard to control an employee’s exposure to heat or sun, or to otherwise address or moderate the effects of such exposure. The term includes, but is not limited to, standards relating to any of the following:
1. Employee monitoring and protection.
2. Water consumption.
3. Cooling measures.
4. Acclimation and recovery periods or practices.
5. Posting or distributing notices or materials that inform employees how to protect themselves from heat exposure.
6. Implementation and maintenance of heat exposure programs or training.
7. Appropriate first-aid measures or emergency responses related to heat exposure.
8. Protections for employees who report that they have experienced excessive heat exposure.
Florida has been experiencing an extreme heat wave for months now, which environmentalists argue has been exacerbated by climate change. Unsurprisingly, Governor DeSantis is not a fan of the global scientific consensus that climate change is ravaging huge sections of the planet, with unexpected weather events like hurricanes and severe heat impacting his state.
Related: Climate Change Severely Impacting Disney Theme Park Attendance
Numerous areas of Central and South Florida are experiencing historic high temperatures, and according to the Florida Policy Institute, the state “has the highest numbers of heat-related illness in the U.S., with the most recent data showing 31,011 emergency room visits and hospitalizations between 2018 and 2022.”
Florida is heavily reliant on outdoor workers, such as agricultural laborers and entertainers. The largest single-site employer in the state, the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, is currently experiencing sweltering heat that is causing costumed performers to fall ill and requiring the park to provide extra protection for its workers.
In the midst of this, Ron DeSantis is defending his decision to prohibit local governments from enforcing worker heat protection (per Florida Politics).
At an appearance at Mo’s Bagel and Deli in Aventura, the governor asserted that HB 433 was necessary because he wants consistency across all areas of Florida, saying, “You don’t want a patchwork of, like, Miami-Dade has all this, and then you go to Collier and then it’s totally different because people are doing business in multiple jurisdictions in this state.”
It is unclear what Governor DeSantis thinks is the issue with different political jurisdictions having different laws, which is the case in all 50 states in the United States. DeSantis has been highly critical of the federal government and the centralization of authority away from state government (i.e., himself), so it is fairly ironic that he does not believe that local governments should have autonomy when it comes to protecting workers.
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Governor DeSantis continued, “It preempts a local government from imposing restrictions in ways that are not likely going to be feasible when you have people doing [business] in multiple jurisdictions…it should be one rule for the state.” In this case, it appears that the politician believes the rights of businesses to operate across multiple areas supersedes that of the actual government and workers’ safety.
Indeed, DeSantis summed things up by saying that if workers need to be protected, businesses (like Disney World) will just do it themselves. He said, “there’s nothing preventing a business from taking any additional action that they want to take.” And, of course, as we all know, all employers always do everything they can to protect their workers.
Do you think Governor DeSantis’ heat protection ban defense holds water, as it were?