North Carolina Workers Need Commonsense Heat Protections

Coauthored with the Farmworker Advocacy Network and UE Local 150, the North Carolina Public Service Workers Union

Hundreds of North Carolina workers visit the emergency room or miss at least one day of work every year because of heat-related illnesses. Some have tragically lost their lives. One study led by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill conservatively estimates that at least 25 people in North Carolina died from heat-related causes on the job from 1999 to 2017.

Despite this, North Carolina does not have a workplace heat standard that explicitly requires essential protections such as written heat illness prevention plans, paid cooldown periods, or free drinking water. The lack of a heat standard puts farmworkers and local and state government employees in danger every time the temperature soars. The North Carolina Department of Labor should immediately develop an occupational heat standard that includes these and other commonsense safeguards.