State agency predicts only minor changes to current rule

By WES SANDER

Capital Press

California's workplace-safety board is expected to decide in mid-August on a permanent version of its workplace rules for managing heat stress.

With a comment period wrapped up in June, the Department of Occupational Safety and Health is preparing a final version of the heat-stress rule that makes only small changes to the current rule.

The Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board is scheduled to take it up at an Aug. 19 meeting in Oakland, spokeswoman Krisann Chasarik said. The board is expected to vote on the amendments in August, possibly at the meeting, Chasarik said.

Len Welsh, chief of the Division of Occupational Safety and Health, proposed emergency revisions in June 2009, saying his department had encountered a "miserable" level of compliance with heat rules the previous month.

The rules require providing cool water, shade and regular breaks. Board members said they would rather see compliance improved rather than the rules changed, and the effort was allowed to drag into 2010.

The proposed rule leaves the regulation mostly intact. It tightens language with respect to training supervisors and allows alternate methods of providing shade when the tents that are normally required prove infeasible or unsafe.

Labor advocates have argued that the trigger for requiring shade structures should be lowered from 85 to 75 degrees, but DOSH has declined that suggestion. The agency has also kept the high-heat trigger at 95 degrees, rather than lowering it to 85, as farmworkers had sought.

At the higher temperature, employers are required to more closely monitor employees for signs of heat stress.

Farm groups have been hoping the state would finalize its rule so employers would know how they must train employees.

"We're fine with the rule as it was released," said Manuel Cunha, president of the Nisei Farmers League.

Cunha's organization has been helping to standardize training efforts around the San Joaquin Valley. Employers were better prepared this year, and were equipped with improved tools, including better-designed posters, materials translated into several languages and shade tents with improved designs, Cunha said.

Even so, the state is investigating the causes of five deaths in June and July, four of which occurred on farms. The fifth was a construction worker. Last year the state investigated 10 deaths, of which a single construction worker was deemed to have died from heat illness.

Employers are routinely surpassing the rules, keeping shade up during all work hours, Cunha said. But it's difficult to control what employees do or how they feel, and having permanent standards will help stabilize the situation for employers, who face liability if the rules are not properly observed, Cunha said.

"Our farmers are doing everything they can," he said.