On January 28, 2026, Georgia Democrats introduced House Bill 1071, the Georgia Workplace Safety and Heat Protection Act, offering new occupational health and safety standards to address employee heat stress and illness where federal legislation proves insufficient. Currently, there are no federal occupational standards to protect indoor and outdoor workers from heat-related injuries, though the Department of Labor is in the process of introducing a new rule. Employer responsibility is still relegated to OSHA's General Duty Clause, which requires employers to create an environment free of recognized hazards likely or proven to cause death or serious harm to employees. These standards include heat-related hazards, and yet nearly 28,000 workplace injuries every year are linked to hot weather, and nearly 400 workers have died from environmental heat exposure in the U.S. in the last decade. If adopted, H.B. 1071 would provide protections for employees from heat exposure through employer-implemented preventative measures, which are triggered by initial heat indices. These measures include providing water, access to shade, as well as mandatory breaks, observation systems, and heat hazard alerts for dangerous conditions.
This proposal comes in the wake of the "hot labor summers" of 2023 and 2024, where workers across major industries boasted monumental strikes across the United States. In Atlanta, workers held strikes for improved working conditions, including measures to address the risk of heat-related injury. In 2024, workers at Delbar Middle Eastern Restaurant and Bar in metro Atlanta held a week-long strike demanding proper air conditioning, $25 per hour wages, and fair scheduling. That same season, Atlanta warehouse workers protested outside of Amazon in East Point, GA, after regular experiences with 100°F temperatures inside trailers and trucks. In the fall of 2025, Teamsters Local 728 in Cumming, GA were on strike for 99 days over concerns of dangerous work conditions and poor pay before reaching an agreement with management.
Across industries, workers are demanding better labor conditions. People who work in the service, construction, sanitation, and warehouse industries are both multiply and directly impacted by colluding oppressions, with many Southern states prioritizing business interests and the wealthy over the working-class. The Southern economic development model is characterized by low wages, low taxes, few regulations on businesses, few labor protections, a weak social safety net, and opposition to unions. And this is displayed throughout anti-labor or labor-neutral legislation. Calls for higher wages, better work-life balance, and safe and supportive work environments illustrate workers' desire for their labor to support overall viable, life-sustaining conditions. Demands encapsulate a more human-centered approach to workers' rights, in which work is defined less by how much profit it generates and more by how it contributes to the well-being of humans and society.
Georgia's newly proposed standard provides minimal protection for workers, aiming to maintain and increase productivity, while ignoring the harsh realities of rising temperatures and heat risk. HB 1071 finds that "outdoor and indoor workers in high-temperature environments are disproportionately affected by extreme heat, particularly in agriculture, landscaping, construction, manufacturing, and warehousing sectors" and that "[o]ccupational heat exposure can occur in urban areas, primarily due to less vegetation and more asphalt and concrete."
Despite these claims, the bill is emblematic of white supremacist logics of destruction and the expendability of southern land and people. It mischaracterizes a person's ability to recover from extreme heat, places the onus of responsibility and care on employers, and maintains a "business as usual" approach to the evolving landscape of labor laws. It acknowledges the health and safety risks that extreme heat poses, and yet the "solutions" offered are nothing more than a panacea. In high-demand working conditions, suggestions of shade, rest, and water are ill-equipped to mitigate the deleterious impacts of high temperatures. It often takes a series of steps and some time before a person's body temperature can reach safe levels again. For example, it's advised that a person experiencing heat exhaustion have their legs elevated, their clothing removed, and be submerged in an ice bath or covered with cooling towels or sponges to bring their body temperature down, allowing 24 to 48 hours before a person can be considered fully recovered. Moreover, the line between heat exhaustion and heat stroke is thin, and the bill incorrectly places the onus on employers to be well-equipped and knowledgeable enough to handle extreme heat conditions, successfully obfuscating government responsibility.
The legacy of slavery and white supremacy has left a callous disregard for human dignity and the sanctity of human life in the South, and it is recognizable in current labor policies. Similar to eugenics and race-science theory, HB 1071 relies upon false notions of Black labor capabilities. Pseudoscientific studies in the 18th and 19th centuries argued that Black people were inherently suited for labor due to alleged differences in anatomy, rooted in polygenist beliefs that Africans were presented as a distinct "species" uniquely fit to undertake the backbreaking work of sugar farming in tropical climates. Slave owner Edward Long once argued that the African body was "peculiarly adapted to a hot climate." Meanwhile, South Carolina-based physician John Lining subscribed to the theory that Africans were particularly resistant to yellow fever and had a natural immunity because they were native to tropical climates. In a similar vein, lawmakers are making the determination that Southern laborers are capable of working under worsening climatic conditions.
Race science logics are implicitly replicated through lawmakers' refusals to present solutions that address climate change-influenced heat risks and the vulnerabilities of mostly Black laborers. The adopted sentiment becomes one where Black laborers are somehow capable of enduring dangerous conditions in the name of productivity. Here, Southern labor power is victim to the poly crisis of exploited labor, climate disaster, COVID-19, and more, made possible through white supremacist logics of disposability in the name of advancing the cause of humanity.
While GA representatives engage in slow death through compartmentalized and incremental legislation, the hot labor summers in 2023 and 2024 demonstrate workers creating economic paradigm shifts that challenge exploitative engagement with land and people through direct action. In line with post-growth and post- (productive) work approaches, Southern laborers' demands encompass a reimagining of labor where consumption, production, and wealth are no longer the focus and, instead, work is defined within planetary boundaries, happiness, and well-being. Instead of looking to government officials and state actors to fulfill the needs of workers, including those of safe working conditions, Southern laborers are facilitating alternative paths, new ways of being, and sites of revolutionary change.