New Heat Safety Law Mandates Paid Breaks, Water, and Fast-Tracked OSHA Rules to Protect Workers

The Asunción Valdivia Heat Illness, Injury, and Fatality Prevention Act of 2025 is a major push to protect workers from dangerous heat exposure. The bill makes it an employer’s baseline duty to ensure their workplace doesn't have conditions that could reasonably cause serious injury or death from heat stress (Sec. 2). Crucially, it forces the Secretary of Labor (OSHA) to develop and issue a comprehensive, science-based Worker Heat Protection Standard within one year, with that initial rule taking effect immediately as an interim final rule (Sec. 3).

The New Baseline: Water, Shade, and Paid Rest

This legislation is very specific about what the new heat standard must include. If engineering controls (like better ventilation) aren't enough to drop the heat exposure to safe levels, employers must implement a core safety program. This program must include providing suitably cool drinking water at the employer's expense, scheduling periodic paid rest breaks, ensuring access to shade or cool-down areas, and establishing acclimatization policies for workers new to the job or the heat (Sec. 3).

If you’re a construction worker, a warehouse employee, or a landscaper, this means those breaks you take to cool down must be paid at your regular rate, and your employer has to supply the water and the shade—it’s no longer optional (Sec. 3). Furthermore, any required training materials and written prevention plans must be provided in English and any other language employees speak, making sure everyone understands the rules regardless of their literacy level.

Fast-Tracked Rules and High-Tech Safety

To get these protections in place quickly, the bill gives OSHA a tight one-year deadline to issue the initial heat standard. To meet this deadline, OSHA can skip some of the usual bureaucratic review processes, ensuring the rules hit the ground running (Sec. 3). The standard must be based on the best available science and aim for the highest level of protection that is feasible. For employers, this could mean investing in engineering controls like better climate control or shielding to eliminate heat at the source, or using administrative controls to change work schedules and limit exposure (Sec. 3).

Take, for example, a logistics company with a massive, non-air-conditioned warehouse. Under this law, they can’t just rely on fans. They might be required to install advanced cooling systems or implement mandatory shift rotations to reduce worker exposure, rather than just waiting for someone to show symptoms of heat stroke. This focus on prevention at the source is a major shift.

Stronger Protections for Speaking Up

One of the most powerful provisions in this Act is the enhanced protection for workers who report problems. If an employee is fired or retaliated against for raising a heat safety issue, they have 180 days to file a complaint. If the Secretary of Labor doesn't issue a decision on that complaint within 90 days, the employee gains the right to sue the retaliating party directly in federal court (Sec. 4). This essentially prevents the complaint from getting stuck in bureaucratic limbo, giving workers a much faster path to justice and making employers think twice before punishing someone for asking for a cool-down break.

For employers in high-heat industries, particularly agriculture and construction, this law will mean significant compliance costs for implementing controls, providing paid rest time, and developing comprehensive, written Heat Illness and Injury Prevention Plans (Sec. 3). However, the law also requires the government to update the National Agricultural Workers Survey to better track how often heat-related sickness and injuries are happening, ensuring that the new rules are actually making a measurable difference for farmworkers (Sec. 6).