In the scorching summer of 2023, two young Latino men working on fruit farms thousands of miles apart tragically succumbed to an insidious and silent killer: extreme heat.

Dario Mendoza, 25, and Efrain Lopez Garcia, 29, were among a string of deaths that occurred during last year’s record-breaking heat. While the number of extreme heat deaths among outdoor workers is thought to range from dozens to thousands each year, according to a 2024 study of state heat protections, the two migrants were among just a handful authorities named and confirmed had died from a heat-related illness.

Their deaths were not only marked by the unusual extreme heat of between 100 and 116 degrees that persisted for weeks on end in their respective states of Arizona and Florida but also by a mix of political inaction and hostility towards workers’ protections at the state and federal levels.

Come July, marking a year since the two men died, a law prohibiting mandatory breaks for those laboring under Florida’s brutal sun takes effect—a statute mirrored by a similar law in Texas. Together, they continue the conservative and corporate-led unraveling of workers’ rights nationwide, further vilifying migrant workers living at the intersection of immigration, labor and race, who risk their lives to put food on their tables, as well as hundreds of millions of Americans.

A dangerous heat wave that brought 100-degree temperatures to the Midwest and Northwest last week has shifted to the South and West, threatening large portions of the country’s 32 million outdoor workers with even hotter temperatures.

States with a large percentage of outdoor workers, like Arizona, Florida, Texas and Louisiana are forecast to be among the most dangerous hot regions this summer. While official figures report 436 outdoor worker deaths since 2011, some like the consumer rights advocacy group Public Citizen, believe the figure could be as high as 2,000 deaths and 170,000 injuries per year, making heat one of the leading causes of death and injury in U.S. workplaces.

But the same issues that disproportionately affect outdoor workers also overlap and merge within their communities at home–which are often low-income people of color. They reside in areas with inadequate cooling and limited green spaces, making it more difficult to escape high temperatures. Those at risk include older adults, children, and people with chronic conditions.

These same communities face compounded risks from their environmental and occupational exposures.

California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, and Minnesota are the only states with extreme heat standards for outdoor workers. While legislators in Florida and Texas have given a mix of reasons for their recently passed laws, including relying on a less stringent and hard-to-enforce federal law, most are prompted by the formidable pull of corporate interests.

“Industry often pushes back when they believe there’s a risk that new workplace regulations could cost money or create more paperwork,” said Juley Fulcher, a worker health and safety advocate who published a nationwide report on state extreme heat laws in May. “But that thinking doesn’t make sense because giving people water and shade is not expensive and keeps employees healthy.”

The dirty and dangerous South

As workers on the coasts and in the northeast have won various labor concessions over decades, including higher wages, benefits, and safety regulations, the south has remained a pro-business region offering low wages and loose regulations.

It has attracted some of the country’s largest and most profitable industries, such as automotive giants like Mercedes and Toyota, plane manufacturers like Boeing and Airbus, Apple, Samsung, Tesla, and major players in the chemical, food, energy, and pharmaceutical industries.

That pro-business attitude has made it easier for corporations and state legislators to neutralize calls for greater labor protections, even in the event of high-profile deaths. Following the death of Lopez Garcia, who was part of a local Guatemalan community, members of the Miami-Dade Council tabled an ordinance that would have created heat protections for local outdoor workers.

But before it could pass, Gov. DeSantis passed a new statewide law forbidding local governments from enacting rules that would provide shade or water breaks for outdoor workers. That bill was sponsored by Rep. Tiffany Esposito, president and CEO of a regional chamber of commerce offering lobbying services to local businesses in the Fort Myers region.

”It is absolutely asinine that we have legislators in Tallahassee dictating what local communities should be deciding in their own backyards,” said Esteban Wood, policy director for WeCount, a nonprofit that advocates for immigrant workers in South Florida. “We need to be incredibly responsive to protecting the health and safety of the workers who grow our food, who build our cities, who keep our economies running.”

The bill out of Texas, known as the “Death Star Bill,” was sponsored by Rep. Dustin Burrows, a litigation attorney focusing on construction, agriculture, and oil and gas issues. His wife’s family is involved in cattle ranching. Rep. Richard Pena Raymond, a Democrat and longest-serving Latino state rep in the U.S., also sponsored the bill. He said he sponsored it “to create a level playing field” for business interests.

The pro-business Florida and Texas anti-heat protection laws are part of a larger pattern of legislation across the South that has continued to weaken labor laws over the last year.

A Louisiana law removing mandatory 20-minute breaks for teenage workers became law earlier this year. Its primary sponsor was Rep. Roger Wilder, who owns 19 Smoothie King locations in the state.

A new anti-union law in Alabama threatens stiff penalties against any employer that voluntarily recognizes a union if that employer also receives government economic incentives. It was sponsored by Alabama Sen. Arthur, an executive at a pest control company with more than 2000 employees in his home state.

Even in North Carolina, where no statewide heat protections exist, a legislator whose husband owns a massive farm where a worker died from heat exposure has actively opposed proposed regulations, according to Fulcher.

”She’s stated loudly that she’s against the heat rules being discussed in North Carolina,” said Fulcher.

North Carolina Sen. Lisa Barnes’s husband owns the biggest sweet potato farm in the world, encompassing over 20,000 acres. An immigrant farm worker died from heat-related illness there in Sept. 2023, while other farm workers allege that they are not given sufficient breaks or water to beat the extreme heat.

A 2011 bill to include heat protections among state labor laws died in the House.

Legislative battles on worker protections

Califonia became the first state in the nation to pass extreme heat protections in 2005, following the death of four farm workers. At the time, every Republican in the state Assembly voted against the measure. That pro-business conservative philosophy continues two decades later in spite of outdoor workers dying, creating significant hurdles for progressive lawmakers to pass lifesaving laws in the face of record-breaking and deadly heat.

Following Mendoza’s death in Yuma last summer, Arizona Rep. Mariana Sandoval submitted a bill in the state House while her Democrat colleague filed a companion bill in the Senate. Both bills were ignored in their respective GOP-led committees.

Meanwhile, a Republican-led bill ensuring that people living in Arizona trailer parks can install “cooling methods to reduce energy costs and prevent heat-related illness and death” became law in April.

Similarly, the tragic passing of California farm worker Asunción Valdivia over 20 years ago has inspired federal action in 2023, yet the bill aimed at creating national anti-heat protections remains stuck in a House committee. Virginia tried and failed to pass a heat protection law, with detractors citing weak federal rules as adequate. Maryland succeeded in passing a law but has yet to establish standards.

Despite widespread legislative efforts in states like Arizona, Florida, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Texas, and Virginia, none of the proposed bills have successfully navigated legislative hurdles.

One notable success was in Phoenix, a city that saw 645 people die from heat-related illnesses last year. The city’s council passed an ordinance in March ensuring easy access to rest, shade and potable water for outdoor workers.

Although many of these northern states are far more amiable to worker protection laws, the lack of interest in finding a solution to the dangers of extreme heat illustrates the stranglehold that industry lobbyists have on state legislatures.

Enforcement failures and disparities

Three years after California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger passed the state’s pioneering law, a pregnant 17-year-old died from heatstroke while working at a vineyard in 2008. She was one of 13 who died from a heat-related illness that year. Advocates said the state’s new rules were routinely broken and the agency charged with protecting workers was understaffed and had failed to hold employers accountable for worker deaths.

Over 15 years later, little has changed in the nation’s wealthiest state, where a vast majority of farm workers continue to seek employment. The state continues to struggle to enforce the rules.

Records from April 2024 show that of the 163 certified health and safety field inspectors employed by the state, only 14 spoke Spanish, while one was fluent in Cantonese and one in Vietnamese. There are no bilingual inspectors in the Central Valley, one of the nation’s most important agricultural hubs.

A survey of 1,500 farmworkers conducted by the UC Merced Community and Labor Center earlier this year found around half of those interviewed said their employers didn’t always provide required rest breaks, and a quarter said they didn’t always have access to clean drinking water.

Despite these failures, California passed heat rules for indoor workers last week, joining Oregon and Minnesota. These rules protect those working in places like restaurants, warehouses, factories, and shipyards.

Interestingly, California’s new rule doesn’t extend to prisons, leaving out more than 40,000 employees, including corrections officers, teachers, and counselors, 75% of which are part of the BIPOC community. It also reignites the debate on whether the state’s 60,000 incarcerated workers should count as employees.

Bizarrely, California inmates who are used to help fight forest fires–which scientists argue are caused by climate change-fueled extreme heat, are also not covered.

The federal government ordinarily acts as a backstop in cases relating to labor and climate protection. However, no specific heat rules are on the books at the federal level other than a vague 50-year-old law that mentions workplace hazards. This makes enforcement difficult and underreporting of heat-related deaths likely.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the federal agency responsible for workplace safety, doesn’t have jurisdiction over small farms, where most outdoor workers are employed and heat-related deaths are disproportionately high.

According to federal stats, farms also employ the most outdoor workers of any profession—where its workers are 35 times more likely to die from extreme heat.

That means the extent of heat deaths is hard to gauge, with OSHA’s figure likely at the lowest end of estimates. According to its publicly available database, which does not include Mendoza or Lopez Garcia, OSHA has recorded 145 heat-related deaths since 2017. The agency is forming extreme heat protections, which will be finalized in 2026.

Can new rules make a difference?

Racial and immigrant status further exacerbate the risks for outdoor workers, according to a Federation of American Scientists report.

They often endure low wages, job insecurity and lack access to adequate healthcare, complicating their ability to cope with and recover from heat-related illnesses. They are also not eligible for unemployment benefits or safety net programs. Fear of retaliation, job loss, or deportation can prevent them from reporting violations or seeking help.

A new policy announced earlier this year is supposed to offer protections to migrant workers who file labor complaints. Still, those can take years to resolve and it doesn’t help fix the exploitative and dangerous labor conditions that many work in. The reluctance to adequately protect the country’s outdoor workers is made more acute as the nation heads into a divisive and polarizing presidential election, elevating issues like immigration, race and white nationalism to the top of the political agenda.

Around 80% of the country’s 3 million farm workers are Latino, with about half undocumented.

While Conservatives call for action on the border with Mexico, very little is made about the presence of migrants in the farming and construction sectors.

It has created a political paradox where competing conservative concerns contrast awkwardly. An open border is essential if farmers are to continue to find outdoor workers willing to toil in deadly triple-digit heat for low wages and even fewer protections.

“Those issues are all part of why it’s hard to protect outdoor workers, who are overrepresented in very dangerous jobs by Black and brown immigrants,” said Fulcher. “But at the same time, these employers want easy access to cheap labor. The U.S. economy depends on these workers. We should protect them.”