Esther Minton, a member of Sheet Metal Workers Local Union 28 in New York City, wears a long-sleeved shirt to work on 90°F days because roof and exterior work leaves no cover from the sun.

“Working outside, you don’t have cover. There’s nowhere for you to really go if you’re on a roof or if you’re on the side of a building,” Minton said. “Having the sun beaming on your skin all day long, you’ll never make it through, so what you wear makes a difference.”

Working outside through the summer months means learning to stay hydrated, dealing with portable toilets that grow hotter than the outside air, and handling copper metals heated by direct sunlight.

“Before the day is over, by the time you’re at break at lunchtime — say 12pm, when the sun is really out and doing its thing — you are drained,” Minton said. “Your body fights hardcore to stay cool, your body fights hard to not be dehydrated.”

This summer was the hottest on record in the US, and workers are on the frontlines of a heat crisis that is expected to drive up heat-related illnesses and deaths, according to The Guardian. The rising temperatures come as the Trump administration and congressional Republicans roll back federal rules meant to protect workers from heat injuries and illnesses.

In January 2025, the White House indefinitely froze Biden-era heat-safety regulations that would have mandated water, shade, breaks, training, and prevention plans for workers exposed to dangerous heat.

House Republicans have pushed legislation that would prohibit the Department of Labor from enacting any workplace protections for heat exposure. Republicans in Florida and Texas have passed similar state legislation prohibiting local city and county governments from adopting heat protections.

Industry groups and lobbyists — including from the agricultural and construction sectors — have strongly opposed federal heat-protection standards, arguing that employers already do what a rule would mandate and that a rule would burden employers. Workers and union officials at a recent Climate Week roundtable in New York City strongly disagreed that employers are doing enough.

Donald Nesbit, executive vice-president of Local 372 and a former school cafeteria worker, recalled working in an old school building every summer in a basement kitchen as he prepared meals for students.

“It was torture. We clocked temperatures at 130F to 140F in school kitchens during these summer conditions,” Nesbit said during the roundtable. “If we were to lock our animals in a car with those same conditions, we would be arrested, right? And yet, workers are working in those conditions, right, so there [have] to be protections. We have to push as a society to make protections better.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recorded more than 2,300 heat-related deaths in the US in 2023 and 2024 combined — the highest numbers in 45 years of records. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration estimates that more than 550 US workers die and nearly 28,000 are injured annually from heat exposure.

A December 2025 study published in the journal Health Affairs found that California’s outdoor heat protections had resulted in at least a 33% reduction in heat-related workplace fatalities since 2010. Only seven states have enforceable heat-prevention standards in place for workers.

In the absence of federal action, New York City moved on its own. In June, Deputy Mayor for Economic Justice Julie Su and Mayor Zohran Mamdani issued heat protections for New York City workers, citing the White House’s pullback. Su served as labor secretary under President Biden.

“We had one proposed and the administration is not moving on it. There are also lots of states that have a standard, and New York does not have one,” Su said. “In the city, we are doing everything we can with the powers that we have.”

“We need a federal heat standard in this country,” Su added.

A spokesperson for the Department of Labor said in an email that “OSHA is currently reviewing comments from the public hearings on the proposed rule ‘Heat Injury and Illness Prevention in Outdoor and Indoor Work Settings.’” The spokesperson added that the agency “provides compliance assistance to employers regarding potential workplace hazards, including guidance on how to keep employees safe in the heat.”