It was a hot, muggy day in south Florida when Cristina Lopez sank to her knees, overcome by a wave of nausea and dizziness, as the sun beat down relentlessly on the plant nursery where the Guatemalan migrant works with three of her children.
Lopez was thirsty, overheating, and unable to continue lugging plant pots as the heat index topped 100F (38C). She could barely see straight, but employers are not required to give outdoor workers regular breaks or access to shade, and Lopez said she was reprimanded for taking a short rest.
“The supervisor told me to punch out and go home if I couldn’t do the work. I felt terrible but I have a family to support and couldn’t afford to lose the hours, so I drank some water and went back to work,” said Lopez, 39, wiping the sweat from her brow.
The climate crisis is making Florida hotter – and more humid. The state’s tropical southern tip is being hit hardest by dangerous heatwaves and last summer the heat index, a measure that incorporates both temperature and humidity, topped 105F (40C) in Miami-Dade county on 42 separate days – compared with an average of six days a year over the previous 14 years.
It was during this inferno that Francisco, Lopez’s youngest son, passed out after an eight-hour shift in an airless truck arranging plant pots, regaining consciousness as the ambulance pulled up at the hospital. The teenager was tachycardic and confused, and jumped out of the ambulance. A week later, he fainted again after another roasting hot shift without sufficient water or breaks. He has since developed tinnitus, and feels anxious when the heat makes him dizzy at work.
“The noise in my ears makes me feel desperate, and I’m constantly scared in case I faint again but in the truck you can’t even stop to take a sip of water … the plants keep coming on the conveyor belt,” said Francisco.
Exposure to high temperatures can cause heat exhaustion with symptoms including cramps, nausea and vomiting, irregular pulse, dizziness, and fainting. If left untreated, heat exhaustion can lead to heatstroke – a medical emergency that can cause brain injury and even death. Chronic exposure to heat can trigger flare-ups in existing conditions such as migraines, asthma, hypertension, sleep disorders and mental health problems, as well as causing serious kidney disease.
Florida is a peninsula state, and its weather is heavily influenced by the rapidly warming oceans. Last year tied as the hottest ever, with July and August 2023 both breaking monthly records. So far this year, Florida has recorded its hottest ever April and May, with dangerous heatwaves hitting the Miami-Dade area before the official start of summer.
Despite this, the plant nursery’s 200 or so employees only get a half-hour unpaid lunch break – which is common practice across much of the industry, according to more than a dozen workers and organisers interviewed by the Guardian.
Employers are required under federal law to provide access to clean water, but most workers bring their own as there is rarely enough, it is often located too far from their work area, and doesn’t smell or taste clean. In some cases, workers said they manage to sneak in a few minutes to rest or drink water when feeling faint – but only if their colleagues keep watch or cover for them.
“The heat is getting worse, but our bosses don’t seem to care. My mission is to get through each day so I can save enough money to go back home,” said Francisco, who arrived in the US from Guatemala as an undocumented migrant when he was 14, working on a guava farm for the first year.
I’ve never seen a gringo carrying a brick or mixing cement, but we can’t vote so they don’t care
Florida has an estimated 1.8 million outdoor workers, predominantly migrants, who are exposed to increasingly brutal weather conditions in the Republican-controlled state, where business interests dominate policy-making. Federal regulations are vague, pretty weak and undergoing a drawn-out review, so advocates in Florida have long campaigned for stronger state regulations to protect workers from unscrupulous employers and the blazing heat.
Last July, on one of the hottest days ever recorded in Florida, Efrain López García died at work on a fruit farm – days after having urged relatives to take extra care and stay hydrated, his stepmother, Maria, told the Guardian. According to the medical examiner’s report, his death was caused by complications from diabetes and cocaine – which can both exacerbate the impact of heat on the body – but the autopsy found “insufficient evidence to opine that the 29-year-old farmworker died as a primary result of heatstroke”.
García’s death became a rallying cry among advocates and Miami-Dade county, home to an estimated 300,000 outdoor workers, was on the verge of passing legislation to mandate employers to provide 10 minutes of rest every two hours, access to clean, cool water, and shade when temperatures hit 95F (35C).
The industry pushback was immense. A joint op-ed in the Miami Herald by two powerful business leaders warned that the heat protection rule could lead to an “existential crisis” for two of the county’s largest industries: agriculture and construction.
At the state level, trade groups and lobbyists leaned on lawmakers to pass legislation blocking towns and cities from passing local heat-safety rules for outdoor workers. The inspiration came from a similar ban in Texas last year, which is under review by the Republican-majority state supreme court.
On the final day of Florida’s 2024 legislative session, a lobbyist for the chamber of commerce sent an email blast urging lawmakers to vote for the legislation, promising – or threatening – that the vote would count double in the seasonal legislative report cards, the Orlando Weekly reported. That night, a construction industry lobbyist texted “HEAT cannot die” to the house speaker’s chief of staff, referring to the blocking legislation.
On the final night of Florida's 2024 legislative session, a construction industry lobbyist DEMANDED lawmakers pass a bill blocking local heat-safety rules.
— Jason Garcia (@Jason_Garcia) April 19, 2024
"HEAT cannot die," the lobbyist texted the House Speaker's chief of staff.
via @SheCarriesOn: https://t.co/bH6hP2fmfh
The pressure worked and the bill – which also killed local efforts for a living wage – was quickly signed into law by Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor and failed presidential candidate. The ban came into effect on 1 July as the heat index soared.
“We proposed commonsense measures to protect workers from the worsening heat and industry groups responded with fear tactics … they are opposed to any independent oversight,” said Esteban Wood, policy director at WeCount, a membership-based organisation for immigrant workers in south Florida.
Neither the Florida chamber of commerce nor the Florida Nursery, Growers and Landscape Association responded to requests for comment.
Florida lawmakers claimed the ban on local protections would create a patchwork of confusing rules that would hurt employers, and that the current federal health and safety regulations are sufficient.
But the data doesn’t square with the fearmongering.
Labour productivity begins to decline when temperatures hit 79F (26C), dropping by 50% at 93F (34C), according to the International Labor Organization (ILO). Florida could lose 107m workforce hours by 2050, costing the state’s economy more than $2bn annually, according to another study.
“Heat stress at work is projected to cost the global economy $2.4tn by 2030 – up from $280bn in the mid-1990s,” the UN secretary general, António Guterres, said in a recent speech on extreme heat.
Across the US, heat exposure is already responsible for as many as 2,000 worker deaths and 170,000 heat-stress-related accidents each year, with low-income and people of colour disproportionately impacted, according to research by Public Citizen – which is far higher than official counts.
Florida is among the most exposed states to dangerous heat – as well as sea-level rise and flooding. Still, DeSantis recently also signed the so-called “don’t say climate bill”, which deletes the mention of climate change from most state laws, and slashed clean energy standards and regulations for fossil-gas stoves and pipelines.
The legislation I signed today—HB 1645, HB 7071, and HB 1331—will keep windmills off our beaches, gas in our tanks, and China out of our state.
— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) May 15, 2024
We’re restoring sanity in our approach to energy and rejecting the agenda of the radical green zealots.
Furthermore, we’re going to… pic.twitter.com/G13RcdxIBR
In Homestead, a sprawling agricultural area with hundreds of small plant nurseries and new developments in south Miami-Dade county, the outdoor workers mostly came from Mexico, Central America, Cuba and Haiti looking for safety and economic opportunities.
Early every morning, day labourers gather at the Home Depot and Azteca supermarkets in the middle of Homestead, hoping to pick-up work on a construction site or farm.
“The heat makes you feel like you’re suffocating,” said Raimundo Perdigon, 58, from Cuba, recalling a recent job building an outdoor bathroom.
“Every year, the climate is changing and we migrants suffer more. I’ve never seen a gringo carrying a brick or mixing cement, but we can’t vote so they don’t care,” said Enrique Calderon, 54, a construction worker from Mexico.
In the unshaded fields, indigenous Guatemalans wearing traditional wide-brimmed straw hats tend rows of fruit trees and plants amid unbearably sticky conditions. Many speak little or no English – or Spanish – and so have limited access to public heat warnings and health advice. This is particularly dangerous for those unaccustomed to the tropical climate, such as the Lopez family, who come from the western highlands, where the temperature rarely hits 72F (22C).
“We are from the cold lands … this humidity is so hard for us,” said Zara Lopez, 18, teary-eyed when describing how she’d vomited and almost passed out, as the heat index hit 111F (44C) in Homestead two days earlier.
“My colleague gave me some juice and covered for me for 10 minutes. I thought life would be easier here, but it’s so much worse.”
At a first-aid workshop run by the Red Cross for WeCount members in Homestead, workers were urged to carry electrolytes and avoid drinking just water, and practised giving CPR in case a colleague suffers heatstroke.
“The ambulance and hospital have to save your life, even if you don’t have papers,” said an instructor, after one participant asked if they could get in trouble for calling 911. Some workers make homemade Gatorade with lemon juice and honey, as the shop-bought stuff is too expensive when rents are surging.
“The humidity makes it feel exponentially hotter. All the data points to more risky heat days and, without access to basic protections and adaptation measures, this will pose an increasing threat to outdoor workers,” said Lauren Casey, a meteorologist from Climate Central.
Areas in south Florida such as Homestead are projected to experience 50 to 100 heat index 105+ days a year by the middle of the century – a fivefold increase from historical conditions, according to research based on middle-of-the-road global heating and climate-action scenarios.
At 10am on a recent Saturday, the heat index was already 105F (41C) as Carlos Morales mowed the lawn of a fancy show home, wearing a cap and bandana to shield his face and neck. Morales, who started his own landscaping business in 2022 after seven years working at plant nurseries, recalled how a couple of days back, he almost fell off his ladder while trimming a hedge. He vomited and developed a piercing headache, but recovered after half-an-hour sipping cold drinks in the shade.
“Thankfully, I’m my own boss now so, when the heat strikes, I can rest,” said Morales, 39. “But every year is getting hotter and, for most workers in Florida, their lives depend on the boss.”
Some names have been changed to protect the workers from repercussions
The Guardian receives support for visual climate coverage from the Outrider Foundation. The Guardian’s coverage is editorially independent.
