Summary#
HB-6442 would amend Michigan’s Occupational Safety and Health Act by adding a section requiring the director to issue occupational health standards for employees exposed to heat or working in hot environments. Its stated goal is to require standards that address heat-related injury and illness. The bill is introduced and is not law.
- The standards must require employers to make and use a heat-injury and illness prevention plan, including an emergency response plan.
- They must require heat monitoring indoors and outdoors, and employer observation of workers for signs of heat-related injury or illness.
- They must set requirements triggered at an initial Wet Bulb Globe Temperature Index level and at a hotter level set by the director. These must include water and rest breaks, with their length and frequency tied to temperature levels.
- They must require employee training and employer collection and reporting of heat-related employee illness, injury, and death. The director must publish the data in a manner the director considers appropriate.
- They must prohibit employers from retaliating against an employee who reports workplace heat hazards to the Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity, and must exempt certain employers. The bill does not say which employers are exempt.
What it means for you#
- Employers: The standards must require heat plans, monitoring, worker observation, data reporting, and training. The bill does not itself set the detailed standards or their start date.
- Employees working in hot environments: The standards must include temperature-based requirements, including water and rest breaks, and protection from employer retaliation for reporting heat hazards to the department.
- Director and department: The director must issue the standards. The director also decides how to publish the reported data.
- General public: The bill does not directly change taxes, create a benefit, or set a fine. It says the bill does not alter the director’s existing responsibility to start processing an administrative rule if the U.S. Department of Labor adopts a heat standard.
Money#
No publicly available information on the bill’s cost.
- The bill requires the director to issue standards and requires those standards to include employer duties. It gives no estimate for government staffing or rulemaking costs, or employer compliance costs.
What is unclear#
- The bill gives no deadline for issuing the standards or date for when they would take effect.
- The director would set the temperature levels, but the bill does not specify them. It also does not define which employers qualify for an exemption.
- The bill does not set details such as how employers must report data or how the director must publish it.
- The parent Act was not supplied, so current requirements and the existing rulemaking duties referenced in the bill could not be checked against current law.
- The bill is introduced; whether it will pass is uncertain.
Case for#
- A possible argument for the bill is that standards covering plans, monitoring, breaks, training, and emergency response could give employers and workers clearer requirements for preventing and responding to heat-related harm.
- Requiring employers to report heat-related illness, injury, and death could give the department information to publish and use when setting or applying standards.
- Linking requirements and breaks to temperature levels could make protections respond to the heat conditions workers face.
Case against#
- The bill leaves important decisions to the director, including the temperature levels, and does not set a deadline for completing the standards.
- The employer exemption is not defined in the bill, so its reach is unclear.
- The standards would require employer planning, monitoring, training, observation, and reporting, but the bill provides no cost estimate or details on how those requirements would be carried out.