Commentary: Indoor heat rule headlines heap of new labor laws


By Bryan Little
California’s regulators and legislators seem to never sleep when it comes to adding to and changing California employers’ obligations and requirements, and 2024 was no different from years past.
New mandates affecting agricultural employers took effect in mid-2024 and Jan. 1, 2025.
Jan. 1 saw the final stage of implementation of Assembly Bill 1066, 2015 legislation changing overtime rules that apply to agricultural employers and employees. All agricultural employers are obliged to pay employees overtime after 8 hours in a workday or 40 hours in a workweek. Never mind the longstanding recognition in pre-2015 law that agriculture is inherently seasonal and that employees need to work and earn when work is available, or not at all.
The result that agriculture advocacy organizations such as the California Farm Bureau warned lawmakers about has come to pass. Thanks to AB 1066, studies have shown that agricultural employees are working less and earning less.
California Farm Bureau is working to help the new state Legislature see the merit of addressing this effect by helping farm employers bear the cost of overtime through a tax credit covering the cost of overtime.
This past November, California voters rejected Proposition 32, which would have mandated an $18 per hour minimum wage. However, the state’s underlying wage-and-hour law includes a minimum wage inflation escalator, so minimum wage for 2025 is $16.50 per hour. Some counties and municipalities’ local minimum wages are even higher.
The California Legislature and the state’s workplace safety agency, Cal OSHA, last year imposed two new one-size-fits-nobody mandates on California employers: the workplace violence prevention plan requirement and the indoor heat illness prevention regulation.
The workplace violence prevention plan addresses escalating urban crime by going after the symptom rather than the cause by requiring employers to “crime-proof” their workplaces.
This requirement expects employers to anticipate situations such as a workplace invasion or mass shooter incident and somehow prevent it by monitoring employees’ social media traffic—even on personal devices—and protecting employees from violence that should have been addressed by law enforcement.
Small employers in particular will struggle to implement this requirement, and agricultural employers may be puzzled about what to do. The Farm Employers Labor Service provides subscribers to the FELS Newsletter a sample plan and supporting documents to implement the requirement.

Photo/Caleb Hampton
Cal OSHA’s new indoor heat illness regulation to protect employees from indoor heat is another poorly conceived effort that will be difficult for employers. It affects those managing packing sheds, greenhouses and other inherently climate-uncontrollable workplaces. It will simply be unfeasible to maintain these workplaces at a temperature below 80 degrees as required by the standard.
The regulation covers workplaces that could reasonably be considered indoor or outdoor, such as the classic two- or three-walled packing shed that is enclosed when in use by high bay roll-up doors and truck and tractor cabs.
Agricultural employers have a strong record of protecting outdoor employees from heat illness by implementing the state’s outdoor heat illness standard. The new indoor regulation imposes new temperature monitoring, hazard analysis and recordkeeping requirements that the existing outdoor standard didn’t need to successfully protect outdoor employees.
California’s perennially active state Legislature moved to restrain California employers’ First Amendment rights to express to employees why they think adopting union representation might not be best, with Senate Bill 399 by state Sen. Aisha Wahab, D-Hayward.
SB 1100, by state Sen. Anthony Portantino, D-La Canada-Flintridge, prohibits employers inquiring whether an employee has a driver’s license or implying that a driver’s license is a job requirement, effectively restraining employers’ flexibility to employ people who can drive.
California’s lawmakers rarely shy away from regulatory diktats that are amazingly broad in scope or so seemingly trivial that one could wonder what public good the givers of law were trying to pursue. Still, California employers are forced to cope with it all.
California Farm Bureau and FELS will continue to work cooperatively to educate policymakers about the real-world implications of their policy choices, and to help agricultural employers cope with the consequences of those choices.
For employer resources such as on workplace violence prevention, outdoor and indoor heat illness prevention and other compliance resources, visit www.fels.net or subscribe to the FELS Newsletter.
(Byran Little is director of employment policy for the California Farm Bureau and chief operating officer for the affiliated Farm Employers Labor Service. He may be contacted at blittle@cfbf.com.)