(New York, March 16, 2026) — The Trump administration should ignore a March 11 letter from 16 Republican Senators aimed at killing a proposed federal rule intended to protect workers from extreme heat, Climate Rights International said today. The administration should maintain detailed and enforceable protections in the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) proposed rule and ensure employers are required to provide basic measures that prevent heat illness and death.

“Heat exposure is a major cause of workplace illness and death in the United States (U.S.), but the risks are preventable by governments and companies that care about the health of vulnerable workers,” said Cara Schulte, researcher at Climate Rights International. “Tens of millions of workers in the U.S. are exposed to extreme heat on the job each year, an estimated thousands of whom have died,  a problem that will only get worse as a result of climate change. It’s shocking that Senator Bill Cassidy, a medical doctor, would call for weaker standards that would lead to potentially deadly health risks.”

Federal action to protect workers from heat has become increasingly urgent as some states have moved in the opposite direction. In recent years, both Florida and Texas have passed laws preventing cities and counties from adopting their own workplace heat protections, such as requirements for water breaks or shaded rest areas, leaving workers to face unacceptable risks without necessary safeguards. 

In 2024, following years of advocacy from workers, health experts, and labor organizations, the Biden administration proposed the first federal workplace heat standard. The rule would require employers to develop a heat injury and illness prevention plan and train workers about heat hazards and related risk factors. Once temperatures reach 80 degrees, employers would be required to provide workers with water, shaded rest areas, and mandatory rest breaks at least every two hours. At 90 degrees, the proposal mandates increased monitoring. Data indicates that these measures could be lifesaving.

Yet the Trump administration has signaled its intention to rework the proposal to make it more “business friendly,” potentially replacing specific requirements with vague performance-based standards that leave heat protections largely up to employer discretion. 

In the letter addressed to Labor Secretary Chavez-DeRemer, Republican senators wrote that “protecting workers from a common and easily understandable workplace hazard does not require a prescriptive rule,” dismissing both the complexities of heat exposure and its effects, as well as the realities of thousands of families that have lost loved ones due to heat-related workplace deaths. The letter lists a series of complaints, suggesting that specific requirements for the provision of cool water could be overly burdensome for employers and that some workplaces may be too “unique” for such hydration standards. It also suggests that regular breaks, for some workers, like roofers, could increase fall risks, despite evidence that demonstrates how rest breaks can actually reduce workplace injuries—including fall risks for roofers, even in the absence of heat.

“The letter disingenuously says that, ‘Nothing is more critical than our shared goal of protecting workers from workplace hazards,’ but the approach endorsed by the Senators prioritizes deregulation and profits over worker safety,” said Schulte. 

OSHA, the federal agency responsible for ensuring the health and safety of workers, currently relies largely on the “general duty clause” of the Occupational Safety and Health Act to address heat. The provision includes only broad language requiring that employers maintain workplaces “free from recognized hazards.” While this provision allows OSHA to issue citations, it is a largely reactive process that provides little guidance to employers about specific prevention measures and therefore provides little protection for workers until after serious harm has occurred.

The consequences of this non-specific approach are already being seen across the country. Nationally, an estimated 170,000 workers in the U.S. suffer from heat-related illnesses each year; and about 28,000 occupational injuries can be linked to work on hot days. The burden of heat exposure also falls disproportionately on lower-wage workers, who experience heat-related injuries at a rate five times greater than America’s highest-paid workers.

The Biden administration’s proposed national standard was intended to address these challenges. Similar measures have already been successfully implemented in several other countries and a small number of U.S. states. 

Experts caution that overhauling the Biden-era rule could be a lengthy process, stalling protections for the millions of U.S. workers already at risk. Rulemaking efforts have already taken five years, beginning with the Biden administration’s announcement of its intention to develop a workplace heat rule back in 2021. Since then, OSHA has received more than 47,000 public comments on the proposed standard. If the Trump administration weakens the rule substantially, it may also face legal challenges.

“By rolling back policies designed to combat climate change while at the same time weakening protections for workers exposed to climate risks, policymakers are sending a clear message that worker safety is not a priority,” said Schulte. “Heat standards should be increased, not weakened. To do otherwise would be to callously abandon workers in the face of deadly climate risks.”