"Over the past 20 years, Victor Ramirez has worked in warehouse after warehouse across southern California. And in almost all of them, he's felt painful, unbearable, oppressive heat. A few years ago, he fainted on the job. When he came to, his coworkers had tried to clean off the floor to give him a place to rest.
"Sientes como si estás adentro de un horno," he says in Spanish — "You feel like you're inside an oven."
Ramirez and thousands of other indoor workers across California have been pushing for years for the state to make rules that would protect them from heat, especially as climate change ramps up the intensity and frequency of dangerous heat. They thought they were on the cusp of success.
This week, California's Occupational Health and Safety Administration's standards board (Cal/OSHA) was set to vote on rules that would have granted indoor workers the right to water, breaks, and cool-down areas when workplace temperatures topped 82 degrees Fahrenheit. Employers would have to use fans, air conditioning, or other methods to cool spaces, and adjust work tasks to account for increased heat fatigue when temperatures or the heat index exceeds 87 degrees Fahrenheit. The heat index is a measure that incorporates temperature and humidity, and more closely resembles the true feeling of heat. "
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