In late June, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani issued Executive Order 17 to publicize the risks of excessive heat. The order identifies ways to protect workers who perform labor outdoors—including those in construction, landscaping, app-based food delivery, street vending, and trash collecting—as well as those who may encounter excessive heat in indoor kitchens and warehouses.
Mamdani’s initiative follows years of organizing by the TEMP Coalition, which was led by the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH). They brought unions, community activists, and worker centers together to demand safety for the 1.4 million New Yorkers—one-third of the city’s workforce—whose jobs put them at risk of heat-related injuries, illnesses, and death.
Their work is born of crisis: Since the 1980s, the number of heatwaves—defined as three or more consecutive days with temperatures above 90 degrees—has doubled as a result of climate change. Mamdani’s administrative action is intended to target, and prevent, the more than 500 annual heat-related deaths throughout the five boroughs.
A press release announcing the order conveyed the urgency: “Many workers go through their workday without paid breaks or easy access to restrooms, and as a result, intentionally limit their water intake, placing themselves at great risk of dehydration, liver failure, kidney disease, and urinary tract infections.”
The order requires all city agencies that operate under the jurisdiction of the mayor’s office to develop and implement indoor and outdoor heat safety plans, and mandates a survey of workers’ compensation claims “to understand patterns related to temperature.” It further requires immediate study of emergency room visits necessitated by high heat, and explicitly spells out the rights of food delivery workers—known in New York as deliveristas—to use the bathrooms of the restaurants whose food they deliver. The city will also increase the number of available cooling centers, and direct several agencies to distribute multilingual safety guidance for workers.
Aboubacar, a New York City deliverista originally from West Africa who asked The Progressive not to reveal his surname, has delivered food for Uber Eats, Grubhub, and DoorDash since 2019. An active member of the Worker’s Justice Project, a sixteen-year-old Brooklyn-based worker center, he says that while he is pleased by Mamdani’s order, much more is needed.
“When we go to pick up an order, if it is not ready, most restaurants tell us we have to wait outside,” Aboubacar says. “In extreme weather, standing outdoors for ten or twenty minutes can be terrible. A few restaurants give us water, but most do not.”
Worse, Aboubacar continues, a lot of deliveristas have been “deactivated” by their app-based employers if deliveries are late or slower than expected.
That’s where organizing comes in. Aboubacar says that while they’re waiting for orders to be completed, delivery workers talk to one another—sometimes through Google Translate—and strategize about ways to improve working conditions. They also hold meetings on WhatsApp each morning.
These communications have begun to pay off. Gabriel Montero, the director of development and communications at the Worker’s Justice Project, says the organization’s efforts on behalf of the city’s 80,000 deliveristas led to a 2023 increase in their minimum hourly wage from $5.49 to $21.44. He also touts the establishment of the city’s first deliverista hub, a place where delivery workers can rest, charge their e-bikes and phones, and learn about their rights. Still, he says, improving safety protections and winning protections from arbitrary dismissal remain organizing priorities.
“These workers are literally fired by an algorithm with metrics that they are not privy to,” Montero says. “This is a lethal occupation, with one in five workers getting injured on the job. There are also a lot of accidents and robberies.”
Furthermore, Montero says, “Unrealistic delivery windows make the job exceedingly difficult. There can be a lot of traffic or an elevator might be slow or not working, which the company doesn’t consider before it deactivates a worker. Our organizing campaign is demanding that evidence be presented before someone is deactivated. We’re also pushing for progressive discipline; right now, the companies go right to firing with no incremental steps.”
Outside of New York City, heat exposure presents similar health risks, and can sometimes prove lethal. Nationwide, high heat exposure is estimated to affect a total of 2.4 million farmworkers, 8.3 million construction workers, 1.8 million warehouse workers, 1.5 million delivery drivers, and more than 2.8 million cooks and kitchen staff.
Despite these numbers, heat protections are rare.
While the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration requires employers to provide a “workplace free from recognized hazards that are causing or likely to cause death or serious physical harm to employees,” the lack of specific heat protections leaves millions in danger of heat stroke, preterm births, dehydration, respiratory and cardiovascular complications, and renal failure.
A July 2025 ABC News report highlighted the magnitude of harm, noting that 9,436 deaths were officially attributed to heat exposure nationwide—a widely-assumed undercount—between 2020 and 2025.
Activists and workers know that occupational safety measures could create better conditions for workers and save lives. But, to date, just seven states (California, Colorado, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington) have passed minimal worksite heat rules.
Roadblocks in other states and cities have derailed efforts to pass protective safety measures.
In 2025, for example, the cities of Austin and Dallas tried to pass ordinances to authorize regularly scheduled ten-minute water and rest breaks for construction workers, but state preemption rules invalidated both efforts. Likewise, a year earlier, in 2024, state preemption policies in Florida—where more than two million people work outdoors—sank legislation to protect workers.
Still, occupational safety and health activists stress that there has been some progress.
In addition to the New York City Executive Order, a few Arizona municipalities, including Tempe, Tucson, Pima County, and Phoenix—the hottest city in the country—now require city contractors to provide outdoor workers with cool drinking water, regular rest breaks in shaded areas, air conditioning in vehicles, and training for new hires to acclimate them to temperatures that can routinely exceed 115 degrees.
Katelyn Parady, associate director of the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health, says she’s proud of the state’s progress on this issue. “But even in Arizona, where there has been some local progress, a large swath of people continue to be employed in localities and occupations with high heat exposure,” she tells The Progressive. “They know what this does to their bodies. They want increased rest and know that climate change is making this more important than ever.”
Immigrants, Parady continues, are especially vulnerable to heat-related illnesses and injuries since they often cluster in high-heat occupations. Nonetheless, she says that they are increasingly pushing for better workplace conditions. “Even in Florida,” she says, “immigrant plant nursery workers are pushing the big box stores that buy plants to abide by a code of conduct that respects their rights.”
In the absence of an enforceable federal standard, Parady says, “workers are organizing at every level. This is a life-or-death issue. The summer heat season gets longer each year and people are demanding water, shade, and rest—their human rights—and are speaking out and sharing stories about workplace abuse.”
Airplane tarmac workers have similarly spoken out against spending ten hours a day moving thousands of pounds of luggage on black surfaces that absorb and radiate heat. “Workers have described the physical and emotional endurance it takes to do this job,” Parady says. “These workers realize that they have the power to do bold, creative organizing to win protections and rights.”
Still, she adds, while workers in multiple outdoor industries have captured some media notice and have mobilized some public support, significant environmental and political obstacles remain.
“Bad air quality from fires impacts heat illness,” Emma Kreyche, director of outreach, education, and advocacy at the Worker Justice Center of New York, a legal services program that assists low-income people living outside of New York City and Long Island. “Our expertise is in organizing and educating agricultural workers, but we also work with restaurant and warehouse workers,” populations that tend to be fearful of reporting heat-related illnesses or injuries.
“We visit workers in their homes and encourage them to take legally protected sick leave if they’re feeling ill,” Kreyche says. But despite some organizing momentum, she reports that many farm workers are afraid to ask for time off. “About 10,000 guest workers come to New York state as seasonal workers on temporary visas, and they don’t want to be seen as troublemakers,” she says. “They are afraid that if they call out sick or get involved in organizing they won’t be allowed to return the following year.”
In addition, Kreyche says that guest workers don’t always take the risk of heat exposure seriously. “They tend to be young men who behave as if they’re invulnerable.”
Nonetheless, as the realities of climate change chip away at machismo, Kreyche sees an opening for workplace organizing on this issue. “During the Biden administration there was a growing movement around heat-related illnesses and injuries,” she says. “OSHA had issued proposed federal standards in 2024, but despite holding several days of hearings, under Trump the effort has gone nowhere.“ This leaves heat-impacted workers with no option but to come together and organize to protect their health and livelihood.
Montero of the Worker’s Justice Project sees it as a moral imperative.
“Delivery drivers and other workers should not be treated like a reserve army and churned out to maximize profit,” he says. “They deserve a fair wage. They deserve respect.”
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Fired Up! Workers for Heat Justice, is sponsoring a National Week of Action, August 10-16, to bring attention to the dangers of excessive heat exposure. National COSH, the sponsor of the week, is making the Fired Up! Heat Organizing Toolkit available to community groups and activists, with free, ready-to-use posters, fact sheets, worker alerts, outreach materials, and training resources to support local actions.