Sen. Alex Padilla and Rep. Judy Chu have introduced the Asunción Valdivia Heat Illness, Injury and Fatality Prevention Act, a federal bill requiring the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to implement enforceable national standards to protect workers from excessive heat.

The bill mandates commonsense protections like paid shaded rest breaks, access to water, emergency response procedures and worker training. While California has some of the strongest heat safety laws in the country, the bill would extend baseline protections to workers in states with no safeguards at all, a move long supported by labor unions.

The bill honors Asunción Valdivia, a 53-year-old farmworker who died of heat stroke after picking grapes for 10 hours in Bakersfield’s 105-degree heat. His death, like those of countless other workers, was entirely preventable. The proposed legislation responds to these injustices with urgency, recognizing that no worker should have to risk death or serious illness just to earn a living. 

California is one of the few states with heat safety regulations, but this bill would bring national parity to a patchwork of protections, ensuring that all workers are safeguarded from excessive heat. It also seeks to speed up OSHA’s notoriously unhurried rulemaking process.

The legislation is widely seen as symbolic, since OSHA’s heat rulemaking process is already underway and the bill is unlikely to pass in the Republican-controlled House. Still, Padilla and Chu’s bill sends a powerful message four years after OSHA began drafting a federal heat rule: Progress has been too slow to match the urgency of the climate crisis. 

But as attorneys know all too well, even the strongest laws are meaningless without enforcement. Recent findings show that even in a state with the strongest heat safety laws on the books, enforcement remains dangerously weak. Between 2019 -2022, 98.3% of serious cases at Cal/OSHA were closed without a referral for prosecution. The consequences of this inaction are severe.

In California, extreme heat led to an estimated 360,000 workplace injuries from 2001 to 2018, with the greatest impact on low-wage, immigrant and outdoor workers. The time to act is now, as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that 2024 was the hottest year on record.

For CAAA members, the bill’s introduction underscores what many already know: The existing legal frameworks are not enough. As attorneys advocating for injured workers, we see the human toll of inadequate safety enforcement every day. As summers get hotter, workers cannot wait for action.

This opinion by the California Applicants' Attorneys Association communications team is republished, with permission, from the CAAA website.