Labor Department cites Florida company over worker’s heat death amid state’s ban on laws to prevent heat illness

The Department of Labor on Monday said it cited a Florida company for its lack of preparedness to prevent heat-related illness after a heatstroke killed a 26-year-old worker from Mexico in September 2023.

McNeill Labor Management Inc. — which provides contract laborers for agricultural markets throughout the United States — was cited in the investigation by the federal Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which found that the unidentified Mexican national had died from heat-related injuries while working in a sugarcane field.

An OSHA investigation found that he had experienced symptoms consistent with a heat-related illness and soon after collapsed.

The heat index reportedly had reached 97 in Palm Beach County, where the man, who was legally visiting the United States on the federal H-2A program for temporary or seasonal non-immigrant workers, died.

The Labor Department says the migrant worker’s death could have been avoided had Belle Gladebased McNeill taken the effort to implement heatrelated safety rules to protect workers.

An OSHA official said had McNeill — which faces a possible $27,655 penalty and is contesting the finding — “made sure its workers were given time to acclimate to working in brutally high temperatures with required rest breaks, the worker might not have suffered a fatal injury.”

The field is roughly an hour west of West Palm Beach, 20 minutes from the closest road and 22 miles from the hospital to where the worker was transported and died, according to a release by the

Labor Department.

“This young man’s life ended on his first day on the job because his employer did not fulfill its duty to protect employees from heat exposure, a known and increasingly dangerous hazard,” OSHA’s Fort Lauderdale-based area director, Condell Eastmond, said.

As average temperatures rise across the globe, the Labor Department said heat illness is a growing safety and health concern for workers. A European Union-backed report said 2023 was the hottest year on record due, in part, to climate change.

The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that heat exposure had claimed the lives of 56 workers in 2020 and 36 in 2021. From 2010 to 2020, Florida recorded 215 deaths directly related to heat, according to the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.

Monday’s OSHA announcement came days after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill that prevents local governments from enacting their own policies to protect outdoor workers in all 67 Florida counties.

The state House Bill 433 — which goes into effect on July 1 — restricts local governments’ power by ensuring they are unable to force companies to “meet or provide heat exposure requirements beyond those required by law.”

A recent years-long effort by Miami-Dade County would have required a 10-minute break for workers in a shaded space every two hours for outdoor workers. The bill signed by the former Republican presidential candidate would make such a requirement void.

At a press conference, DeSantis pointed to the Miami-Dade effort specifically, saying “there was a lot of concern” about it from some lawmakers.