I am happy to announce our alliance with Worksafe. We are aiming to unite in the common goal of getting solid heat-related legislation on the table for the 2025 legislative cycle. Worksafe is a statewide worker advocacy nonprofit in California whose primary goal is increasing health and safety protections for the state’s workforce of over 18 million, including incarcerated workers. Their mission is to protect people from job-related hazards and empower them to advocate for the right to a safe and healthy workplace. They have provided leadership and coordination among labor unions, worker organizations, public health, and legal rights advocates in order to pass protective laws—as well as fighting for access to justice for immigrant and low-wage workers in high hazard jobs. For over 30 years, Worksafe has led campaigns that made California a national leader in workplace health and safety laws and regulations.
On July 23, 2024, California’s “Heat Illness Prevention in Indoor Places of Employment” regulation went into effect. The rule applies to most workplaces where indoor temperatures reach 82°F or higher, requiring employers to take steps to protect workers from heat-related illness. However, prisons were excluded from this regulation due to cost concerns, and separate protections for prison workers will be developed later, which could take months or years to implement.
Worksafe Attorney AnaStacia Wright told the news organization CalMatters in their April 2024 publication: “It’s a huge concern that prison workplaces are being excluded from the heat standard, leaving not just guards but also nurses, janitors and many other prison workers across California unprotected from heat, not to mention all the incarcerated workers vulnerable to those dangerous conditions as well.”
My personal hope is that all the major worker unions will rally with us to make heat-related protections a reality for incarcerated people across the state. While Worksafe primarily focuses on worker’s rights and protections, in our initial meeting I was able to draw the direct correlation between non-workers and workers. I shared how every place in prison where people are housed, incarcerated people are working. For example caregivers oftentimes assist with cleaning or making someone’s bed inside a cell, porters in the infirmary cleaning cells etc. So while Worksafe is supporting worker heat protections, by extension they are supporting the whole incarcerated population.
Advocates across the state are concerned about the heat regulation and the California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation exemption of CDCR from the heat regulations. This matter is getting national coverage in the LA Times, CalMatters, KQED, NPR and All Of Us Or None Newsletter, Worksafe Newsletter, Filtermag.org, CaliforniaHealthline.org, www.context.news, and several others.
Alissa Moore, LSPC Re-Entry Coordinator
Originally published by All of Us or None.
