Florida Republicans almost did something good for public employees, but it didn't work out.
Nearly one million state and municipal workers in Florida aren't covered by federal workplace safety regulations. A half-baked plan from the GOP could have changed that.
In the fall of 2021, the Florida Legislature convened for a roughly 36-hour special session in Tallahassee to discuss arguably the biggest issue of the year: COVID-19. Or rather, efforts by the federal government to curtail the deadly virus’ spread.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a frequent critic of the Biden administration, was up in arms over a proposed COVID-19 vaccine mandate from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), a workplace health and safety agency in the U.S. Labor Department that regulates private companies.
The DeSantis administration filed a lawsuit over the mandate, and called on the state Legislature to establish “protections” for Floridians who opted to defy the federal mandate. Following the governor’s lead, Republican legislators pitched an idea that they believed would allow the state to circumvent OSHA’s mandate: Why not create a state-run workplace safety and health agency for workers instead?
Nothing of the sort has ever truly existed in Florida. Or, at the very least, it’s been a while.
The Florida Occupational Safety and Health Act, enacted in 1982, established a state Division of Safety authorized to create workplace safety rules for public and private sector employers, assist employers with implementing them, and enforce regulations through inspections and investigations of alleged complaints.
Public or private employers that skirted the law faced civil penalties of up to $50,000 per violation, if found guilty through a hearing process. The division received about $11 million per year in funding, and staffed nearly 150 employees in 17 offices across the state.
Unsurprisingly, it didn’t last.
According to one former union staffer, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush “opposed the safety program for employees” and felt the division — housed within the state’s Department of Labor and Economic Security — was “duplicative.”
At the behest of Bush, Florida legislators dismantled that workplace safety division in 2000 through a repeal of the Florida Occupational Safety and Health Act, then dissolved the state labor department entirely in 2002.
The directive of the Bush administration was to identify workforce programs that could be “eliminated, consolidated, or privatized.”
Some responsibilities of the dissolved labor department, such unemployment assistance and child labor compliance, were transferred to other agencies or departments in state government, where enforcement is questionable. Others, including minimum wage enforcement and workplace safety regulation, were largely abandoned.
Roughly 20 years later, under the DeSantis administration, comes House Bill 5-B, a proposal hastily put together during that 2021 Special Session. The bill sought to kick-start the process of developing a state OSHA of sorts. It was pitched as an effort to “withdraw” from OSHA — something that, in reality, wouldn’t have been possible. It was approved by the GOP-controlled Florida legislature largely along party lines.
Florida Democrats, who opposed the measure, viewed it as a politically-motivated attempt to challenge the Biden administration that would ultimately lead nowhere. Republican Jeff Brandes, an outgoing state Senator who notably voted against the measure in defiance of DeSantis, later described the bill as “theater”.
“It’s silly, and it’s just theater,” Brandes told the St. Pete Catalyst. “It’s not real.”
The ‘silly’ bill nonetheless allocated a less-silly $1 million in public funds for the Governor’s Office to come up with a report by Jan. 17, 2022, detailing what exactly the process of coming up with a state OSHA program would look like.
The two-page “report,” shared with leaders in the Florida House and Senate, ultimately estimated it would take nearly a decade to develop a state OSHA program, noting this would require “extensive coordination” between state and local governments, plus the “cooperation” of the federal government.
“While it is too early to determine whether or not pursuing federal Occupational Safety and Health Act delegation is prudent,” the report notes, “We value the opportunity for collaboration on this proposal for the betterment of Floridians.”
I reached out to the Governor’s Office for an update on this plan last month to see if it’s moved forward at all, and have not received a response.
Dr. Rich Templin, chief lobbyist for the Florida AFL-CIO — the state’s largest federation of labor unions — told me for Orlando Weekly that the Governor’s Office had, in all likelihood, just abandoned the idea.
“They got their headlines, and they just let it go,” he said.
A wasted opportunity
What’s truly sad, if we are to assume the plan was political theater from the start, is how the proposal could have actually benefited Florida’s underpaid and overburdened public sector employees, who (while it’s rarely brought up) have never been covered by OSHA.
See, when Congress first passed the Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Act a half-century ago, and established OSHA to enforce workplace standards, the landmark bill came with a gaping loophole: State, city, and county government employees would not be covered.
This loophole, still in existence today, leaves roughly 7.9 million workers in the U.S. outside of OSHA protections. Such protections range from very basic requirements, such as keeping a workplaces free of deadly hazards, to more specific regulations for dangerous industries such as construction.
In Florida, this exclusion leaves nearly one million public employees — from trash collectors to bus drivers, teachers in public schools (whose classrooms may or may not have functioning AC), and electricians — afforded only whatever protections their individual employer deigns to provide.
In 2006, this OSHA loophole had deadly consequences for two city employees at a wastewater treatment plant in Daytona Beach, who died from a fatal explosion above a 3,000-gallon methanol tank. Unlike private employees in the same jobs, these employees weren’t required to receive annual chemical safety training, or specialized training for handling methanol. An investigation later revealed they hadn’t received such training in at least 10 years.
The two men, tasked with repairing the hurricane-damaged roof of the Bethune Wastewater Treatment Plant, brought out a cutting torch to aid them on the job, not realizing they were working directly above a methanol tank, nor the dangers of doing so.
Sparks from the torch ignited vapors within the tank, causing an unavoidable explosion for those on top. In addition to the two men who perished, another man was left with severe injuries. He was hospitalized for four months before being released to rehab.
The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, which later investigated the incident, determined the fatal incident could have been prevented with proper safety protocol in place. “Today, no Florida state laws or regulations exist to require municipalities to implement safe work practices for or communicate chemical hazards to municipal employees,” the report notes.
The board offered recommendations for various entities, including the city, the state Legislature and the Governor. Chiefly, the board recommended Florida enact legislation requiring localities to implement “policies, practices, procedures, including chemical hazards covering the workplace health and safety of Florida public employees that are at least as effective as OSHA” and to fund a mechanism to “ensure compliance.”
This didn’t happen.
Ahead of those recommendations, a number of people testified in front of the federal board, including former Director of Education for AFSCME in Florida, Marc Brody, whose union represented the workers who died.
“The lives and health of workers are worth no less if they work for public employers as they work for private employers,” Brody argued.
“It’s scandalous that wastewater treatment workers and thousands of other state and local government workers in Florida do not have the most fundamental rights to a safe workplace that every American worker needs and deserves.”
It doesn’t have to be this way
While public employees in Florida aren’t covered by federal OSHA, federal law does allow a process through which states can essentially opt public employees into OSHA protections. So, it’s possible, with the political will.
As of publication, however, just 29 states and U.S. territories in the country have done so, meaning workers in the states without such plans, as former OSHA deputy assistant secretary of labor Jordan Barab puts it, “have no right to a safe workplace, [and] no right to come home alive and healthy at the end of the work day.”
Establishing coverage for public sector workers first requires a state to develop a state OSHA plan with standards that are at least as effective as federal standards.
Standards for state plans — which are eligible for up to 50% funding by federal OSHA — can be stronger than federal standards, but no weaker. And they must secure federal approval.
Twenty-two states currently have full state plans, covering workers in both the private and public sectors, according to OSHA, while seven additional states have plans that cover public employees only.
Templin, who serves as the primary point of communication between the state Legislature and organized labor, told me the Florida AFL-CIO would have welcomed a serious proposal from Florida legislators.
“Our position was, if you guys want to do this, we’re not opposed to it, but bring everybody to the table,” he told me, in recollection. “I ran around like crazy and said, ‘Look, if you guys are serious, you want to set up your own safety administration — that’s great. Let’s do it.’”
“But they weren’t serious,” he said.
Whether it’s the dissolution of the state labor department, the preemption of local living wage and heat protection laws, or direct efforts to undermine labor unions, “Florida has a long history of having very little regard for workers in the state,” argued Templin.
The Biden administration’s COVID vaccine mandate — the impetus that launched this frenzy — was ultimately withdrawn by OSHA, anyway, shortly after being struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in early 2022.
No contract, no protections
One way that Florida’s public employees can force their employer to meaningfully protect them on the job is to negotiate safety policies into a union contract.
Union contracts negotiated by the public sector arm of the Services Employees International Union (SEIU-FPSU) and the Laborers International Union of North America (LiUNA), for instance, establish that the public employer they bargain with “shall comply with federal, state and local legislation concerning safety, health, sanitation, and working conditions.”
Ronnie Burris, a representative of LiUNA Local 630, confirmed to me that this means the locality has to follow OSHA rules and standards, and if they don’t, the union can file a grievance.
As a result of last year’s anti-union “reform” law, however, over 68,00 public employees in Florida — from electricians and equipment operators for the city of Pensacola, to school bus drivers for Volusia County public schools — have since lost their union representation, and by extension, their union contracts.
Some local governments, like Orange and Palm Beach Counties, have voluntarily adopted OSHA standards, but have weak, complaint-driven, or non-existent enforcement mechanisms.
“The lives and health of workers are worth no less if they work for public employers as they work for private employers”
During the investigation into the deadly 2006 explosion, Palm Beach County employee safety manager Brian Berke testified that, although he was confident in his county’s commitment to protecting workers’ safety, “It is my belief that only mandatory regulatory requirements, whether coming from a state or federal level, are needed to support and nurture safety efforts within the public sector.”
Brody, the former AFSCME staffer, acknowledged the importance of the union difference, but also, its limitations.
“Many public-sector unions, including ours, have tried to include safety language in our contracts,” Brody testified. Unfortunately, in many cases, he said, this language had “really no teeth, and you have no way to back it with administrative criminal sanctions and violations.”
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Even today, the difference in protections afforded to the public and private sectors is apparent. Nationally, state and local government workers in 2022 suffered an injury rate that was 81% higher than the reported rate in the private sector, where workers still have to contend with a federal enforcement agency that is underfunded and understaffed.
Hundreds of working Floridians employed by private companies or contractors still die on the job each year, and sometimes, it’s because their employer failed to follow the rules to keep them safe.
In Florida, there are just about 50 federal OSHA compliance officers to go around, and that’s covering a private sector workforce of millions. If Florida were to adopt a state OSHA plan that covered both sectors, this could reasonably help enhance workplace safety not just in the public sector, but in the private sector, too.
The cost of creating such a plan likely wouldn’t come cheap. But there’s also reason to believe it could ultimately deliver cost-savings, and DeSantis hasn’t been shy in bragging about the state’s budget surplus.
“By keeping our economy open, maintaining a low tax environment, and being fiscally responsible, Florida’s budget reserves have never been stronger,” DeSantis shared in a statement in 2022, announcing a record $21.8 billion budget surplus. “While Washington, D.C., has consistently gotten things wrong, Florida has consistently done things right.”
For those who have lost loved ones, or limbs to preventable accidents on the job, the relish of ample reserves might not be so sweet.
Casey Jones, widow of Clyde Jones — one of the Daytona Beach employees who died from his injuries in the 2006 explosion — used her grief to advocate for a better and safer future for others.
“On January 11, 2006, my husband and best friend, Clyde Jones, was taken from me and the children, family, friends and community who loved him,” Jones testified in front of Congress in 2007.
“The government that my husband loved and served did nothing, absolutely nothing, to provide him with a safe workplace,” she said. “They simply ignored responsibility for his safety because they did not have to provide a safe work environment as a city government.”
Doctors who treated Clyde at the hospital after the explosion, before he succumbed to his injuries, “cried uncontrollably,” said Jones, “because of their empathy for the unbearable pain they knew he was in.”
“You cannot help my husband or others that suffered, but you can help to save lives and the devastation caused by horrific injuries to the future victims and future families,” she continued. “I am here hoping that my husband’s life was not taken in vain.”
Earlier this summer, U.S. Chris Deluzio (D-PA) and Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) introduced bipartisan legislation that would make good on pleas by advocates to extend OSHA coverage to the full public sector.
It’s not the first attempt by members of U.S. Congress to do so, but for your neighbor, friend, family member, or partners’ sake — with state action unlikely to occur in Florida — you might hope it’s the last.