Texas gets very hot in the summer, with temperatures rising well over triple digits and making manual outdoor labor not just uncomfortable but downright dangerous. As a result, some municipalities such as Dallas and Austin have passed ordinances that require employers to give a 10-minute water break every four hours. That seems to me to be nowhere close to enough but even that is too much for the governor Greg Abbott who has signed into law a measure passed by the Republican legislature that bans local governments from enforcing such ordinances.
The measure, which will take effect later this year, will nullify ordinances enacted by Austin and Dallas that mandate 10-minute breaks for construction workers every four hours. It also prevents any other local governments from passing similar worker protections.
Just days after Greg Abbott, the governor, ratified the law, officials said a 35-year-old utility lineman working to restore power in Marshall, Texas, died after experiencing symptoms of heat illness. The heat index – which takes into account both the temperature and humidity – was 100F (37C) while he was working.
So why did the Republicans take this cruel step? To make life easier for businesses of course that lobbied for it.
[T]he Republican lawmakers pushing the new law have said it eliminates a “hodgepodge of onerous and burdensome regulations” that Texas businesses face. The effort aims to prevent cities and counties from enacting progressive policies that counter the state Republican supermajority’s aims.
“For too long, progressive municipal officials and agencies have made Texas small businesses jump through contradictory and confusing hoops,” said the Republican state representative Dustin Burrows, who introduced the bill.
Of course the humane solution to their concerns is obvious: make such breaks mandatory across the state, thus ensuring uniformity and easy compliance. But that of course cannot be allowed because it would harm profits.
After the state’s second-hottest summer on record last year, Democratic legislators introduced bills that would have set heat illness guidelines for Texas businesses and required mandatory breaks for government contractors, but those efforts failed to advance.
It probably does not need to be said that the workers who are going to be most affected by these laws are Latino and Black.
Six out of every 10 construction workers in Texas are Latino, and labor advocates say that the law will hurt Latino and Black communities that are already disproportionately affected by extreme heat. Hispanic workers made up a third of all worker heat deaths since 2010, according to an NPR/Columbia study.
Local protections are crucial, advocates say, because the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha) does not have a national heat protection standard.
Sometimes, in my more cynical moments, I think that cruelty is not an unfortunate byproduct of harmful actions taken for other reasons, but that it is actually part of the motivation.
I’m not a lawyer… but I kind of wonder if the solution to this wouldn’t involve quite a few of them. If a company lobbied for this law that sounds like it would help prove they knew all about the best practices and simply chose not to follow them. As I understand it this is the sort of evidence that juries use to justify large punitive additions to judgements against companies.
I don’t think anyone should have to die just so your relatives can go to court and try to maybe get the people that killed you to pay blood money. But I guess if we have so-called conservatives setting speed records for how fast they want to go backwards then I guess that’s where we’re at.
It seems bizarre to me that you would even need to mandate water breaks. You would think that even the most cold hearted sociopathic employers could figure out that you can get a lot more productivity out of your workers if the are kept properly hydrated.
In my opinion, it’s not just the profit motive that these businesses are acting upon when they get their legislatures to enact these cruel laws. I’m quite sure that decent safety regulations which protect workers actually make the companies more profitable, just like a single-payer medical program would also benefit their bottom lines. I’m convinced that this poor treatment of workers, often leaving them only the option of quitting their jobs--these are nothing more than methods to keep workers “in their place” along with other union-busting efforts.
I recall doing construction work with my Army National Guard unit in places like Panama and Honduras in which it was mandated to have a medic on site who, among other tasks, had to monitor a wet-bulb thermometer. There were times when the crew could only work for 20 minutes per hour and rest in the shade for 40 minutes per hour. And Texas can’t even allow 10-minute breaks every 4 hours!
If the Democrats enacted a hug a puppy policy the Republicans would repeal and replace with a kick a puppy proclamation.
Yeah, it is cruel and also counterproductive.
Working in extreme heat can be fatal.
In 2021, there was a record heat wave in Oregon.
70 people died from it.
One of the most obvious was a 38 year old farm worker from Guatemala who literally died on the job.
“Corvin said Oregon OSHA received a report that the male employee was working on a crew moving irrigations lines and was found unresponsive in the field at the end of his shift.” It was 104 F that day.
No water for lawmakers. Fair?
No AC either.
Sometimes, in my more cynical moments, I think that cruelty is not an unfortunate byproduct of harmful actions taken for other reasons, but that it is actually part of the motivation.
Do you ever actually believe Republicanism as we know involves any constructive urges?!?
By now, it’s villainy all the way down.
Pierce @#8,
I try to avoid villainizing political opponents, trying whenever possible to ascribe their actions to them having a different ideology than mine, instead go being driven by sheer evil intent.
Naively, I had thought that every state had mandatory required rest breaks. Turns out only 11 do.
@9: in the UK it feels like it’s been about 8 years since its been reasonable to consider people who vote right wing as fully human. In the US, i think the figure is closer to 150.
@4 larpar
If the Democrats enacted a hug a puppy policy the Republicans would repeal and replace with a kick a puppy proclamation.
True, but in keeping with current political Orwellian naming conventions, the associated Republican legislation would require people to buy AR-15s and also outlaw contraceptive devices used by females.
Back to the OP, it’s been said a million times, but cruelty is the point, especially when it comes to keeping “undesirables” in line. Always remember that in those circles, “business friendly” means “worker antagonistic”, because the point is to maximize private profit at the expense of the community.
Mano Singham @ # 9: I try to avoid villainizing political opponents, trying whenever possible to ascribe their actions to them having a different ideology than mine, instead go being driven by sheer evil intent.
At a certain point -- probably before, but clearly by, 2016 -- that model becomes complex and contrived than the sadopolitical framework. By now Occam’s Razor mandates that non-cruel Republicanism has become the exception, and most of that (considering the minimal-if-any resistance to Trumpism) amounts only to skimpy façades, about as credible as Bushian “compassionate conservatism”. Hanlon’s Razor just doesn’t cut it anymore.
While “evil” can mean many things, “cruelty” and “hostility” apply practically without exception to the ideological goals now dominating the GOP. We can trace the threads back through Bush, Gingrich, Reagan, Nixon, McCarthy, and the Birchers and Kluxers before them, variously exploiting and embodying various bigotries and resentments -- and we can observe how the party and its leaders took the wrong turns at just about every fork in the road.
See Adam Serwer’s The Cruelty Is the Point for a better summary than I could give.
How we might rehabilitate that part of the population, I dunno, but at the minimum it will need lasting and widespread political humiliation and a major reduction in wingnut media (then maybe let the Kumbaya crew try their thing). The solution proposed by the Republicans themselves -- FEMA re-education camps -- appears as likely to fail as all their other policy suggestions. Actually creating a workable and sustainable society seems a necessary but not sufficient step, on a generational scale, but guess-who also comprises the primary obstacle to that goal.
Some people seem to begrudge low-status groups any perceived benefit.
Consider the cruelty of guards in that goddamn prison in Iraq.
And some Republicans clearly have an us-versus-them attitude to low-income workers.
Their very ideology tells them anyone can be rich if they just work hard enough. Therefore, poor people must just be lazy.
So, no, unlike Mano Singham I do not give them the benefit of the doubt. If it looks like the cruelty is the point it is because the cruelty is the point.
I try to avoid villainizing political opponents, trying whenever possible to ascribe their actions to them having a different ideology than mine, instead go being driven by sheer evil intent.
You’re highly intelligent, how can you choose to be naive?
“Evil” or “good” are labels we slap on collections of behaviors, to more easily (and sometimes better) carry a personal analysis of the meaning and motives for the behaviors. Calling The Holocaust “evil” both amplifies and simplifies our analysis, but it’s not untrue. A sadist who is motivated by opportunism, cruelty, and racism -- like Texas governor Abbot -- can be described truthfully as “evil” without having to unpack the details. Besides, if the person you are talking to is being deliberately obtuse, they can and will more down attempts to unpack the details, “sadist is not well defined and how can you make a psychological diagnosis of someone who is not your patient?” Etc.
This point is best captured for me in a zen kōan: “Shusan the sage lifted his walking stick and said ‘to call this my walking stick denies its essence, to call it a piece of wood denies its value. So, what is it?” [my answer: “let us look at it together.”] Sometimes calling someone “evil” is brilliant analysis. Sometimes it’s hyperbole. Times I have tried on my blog to grapple with linguistic nihilism, I argue that one becomes more vulnerable, not less, if they avoid embedding analysis/opinion in their language, with the caveat that you always must be wary of time-wasting assholes who can demolish your ability to use language, anyway.
Without being able to use labels, we are just inviting endless time-wasting assholery and John Morales style quibblectic.
Orwell’s exploration of O’Brien’s sadism is brilliant. How do we assure ourself we have power over someone? We make them suffer. One can quibble that the sadist must/often does eroticise their victim’s suffering and that (for example) Abbot is not a sadist per se until we know he eroticises the suffering he causes, I suppose, but he’s making people suffer to ratify his lust for and achievement of power. If that is not evil, the word has no meaning.
Not legally mandating breaks does not entail those breaks won’t occur — employers can be pragmatic too. And it does not take 10 minutes to have a drink.
I guess they saw how efficiently Qatar could keep building stadiums while 6500 workers died of heat exhaustion, denied water and rest breaks in 50C heat, and decided “It’s only 35C here! Keep working!”
https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/thousands-migrant-workers-died-qatars-extreme-heat-world-cup-forced-reckoning
Marcus, perhaps Mano is exercising a version of Hanlon’s Razor.
He clearly refers to it being applicable a priori rather than ongoing.
“For too long, progressive municipal officials and agencies have made Texas small businesses jump through contradictory and confusing hoops,”
The way I see it, as a business owner, you have two options, either you:
-- You have, (possibly, but hopefully not) contradictory and confusing legislative hoops, which if passed means you checked the right boxes and if someone dies on your watch, it’s not your fault.
-- If someone dies on your watch, you’re responsible… by which I mean I expect murder/manslaughter/wrongful death (I’m not a lawyer, choose the right term) charges to be filed. They made choices which they knew (or should have known) would lead to deaths of their workers.
That’s the whole point of regulation. You choose to pass some of this responsibility to the regulatory body. Banning regulations basically says you can simply blame the companies! I’m pretty sure having your CEO thrown in jail would harm “profits”.
@13 :”How we might rehabilitate [the right wing voting] part of the population, I dunno”
Bullets? Seriously: how bad do things have to get before you realise most of the people putting the evil scum into power can’t be rehabilitated. Most of them couldn’t even spell it
Texas prisons: no ac, solitary confinement, heat wave:
https://www.kxan.com/news/texas-inmates-being-cooked-alive-in-heatwave-with-no-air-conditioning/amp/
“For too long, progressive municipal officials and agencies have made Texas small businesses jump through contradictory and confusing hoops,” said the Republican state representative Dustin Burrows, who introduced the bill.
First: “Contradictory?” Is there some other local reg that contradicts the minimum-water-break rule?
And second: “Confusing?” How is it “confusing” to require water-breaks for outdoor workers? Are Texas bidnessmen lacking in arithmetic skills or something? Seems a pretty damn simple rule to me…
Raging Bee, it’s politico-speak. It’s not an argument, nor meant to be one.
More akin to “this is how it’s been, we’re gonna change how it’s been”.
I think that WaPo did a slightly better job contextualising when quoting that:
“For too long, progressive municipal officials and agencies have made Texas small businesses jump through contradictory and confusing hoops when it comes to the current hodgepodge of onerous and burdensome regulations,” one of the bill’s Republican sponsors said in explaining its rationale.”
(https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/06/23/in-record-heat-texas-law-ending-shade-water-breaks-is-cruel/66863ca6-11c0-11ee-8d22-5f65b2e2f6ad_story.html)
Of course, laissez faire economics is their goal; after all, one cannot possibly have contradictory and confusing hoops or a hodgepodge of onerous and burdensome regulations when there are no regulations at all.
John: In a laissez-faire “system,” the job of making contradictory and confusing hoops and onerous and burdensome regulations would be left to the private sector. This is why laissez-faire is better than totalitarianism.
Raging Bee:
Well, totalitarianism refers to a centralised and dictatorial system of government where the state requires total subservience, and laissez faire refers to a regulation-free system of free market economics.
So, no. They’re incommensurable because they’re different categories.
—
BTW, that WaPo article I adduced is better and more informative than the Guardian link in the OP, in my estimation.
Back in the ’70s when I started working real jobs, I was a retail clerk for a local department store. Posted on the bulletin in the break room was a list of Federal work rules that included a 15 minute break for each four hours of work and a 30-minute lunch break if we worked more than a (I believe) six hour shift. Before I turned 16 I had worked in farm fields (mostly bucking hay bales) where we were paid by the piece and we took breaks whenever we wanted. I think that Mothers Against Greg Abbot really needs to turn the rage up a few notches.
OK, I found a link to traces of governor Abbott’s original ancestors.
https://phys.org/news/2023-06-humans-evolutionary-butchered-million-years.html
birgerjohansson, they’d be your ancestors too.
(Point being?)
I wonder if John genuinely or intentionally missed the point of #29. Any takers?
If you mean the ostensible point that bad people existed and since Abbott is bad too it makes for a good excuse to pose a link which has zero to do with the topic at hand (and which was similarly posted in yet another thread elseblog, same reason) by shoehorning it in via that tenous linkage, yeah, I got the point, Holms.
(And why people such as you tend to address me in the third person is not exactly obscure, either)
[I know, I know. Talking to the audience. Defs not to me]
What’s kinda revealing is how you imagined I missed the point, clumsy as it was, and transparent as it was.
Obviously I got it, so I didn’t miss it either intentionally or otherwise other than in your wishful thinking.
But, entertain me: what makes you imagine I missed it, based on what I actually wrote?
#32 John
Ah, so you answered as if you hadn’t gotten the point deliberately.
To invite further comments from others, yes, it was not intended to be obscure.
Only to such as you.
Now you’re quite reticent to essay a specific answer about the basis for it.
Vague feeling you got, I suppose.
Enough to speak out, not enough to rationalise.
Nice concession there.
Ah well, you were successful in getting at least one taker, and invited comments from me. Success!
#36 John
You mistake ‘as if you hadn’t gotten it’ for a lack of understanding as to your purpose.
Y still imagine that I wrote that ‘as if [I] hadn’t gotten it’, Holms? Heh.
I can’t change your perception, but I reckon birgerjohansson got it, alright.
See, when I write comments addressed to someone, it is they I address.
I tailor them for the recipient, not my self-perceived snipy nemeses.
(His habit of OT comments to link interesting stuff he found is something I’ve noted in the past, so this time he did the time-tested spammy type of thing, where a keyword from the OP is used to spruik a product)