Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Texas rules requiring water breaks for construction workers will be nullified

texastribune.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 140 posts

Re: Texas rules requiring water breaks for construction workers will be nullified

#21

Post by bobthepanda »

bequanna wrote: post #16
jmclnx wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More than that, the Real Market (Earth) may solve this issue for good, when Texas regularly hits Wet Bulb Temp due to Climate Change, people will start heading north. So no more Texas. This is crazy, I am sure the Lawyers are now looking closely to Case Law to e ready when the suite start flying.

This is pretty strong conjecture that is the exact opposite of what is currently happening. If Texas is such a terrible place to live, why are so many people moving there?

Wet bulb temperature would be when the climate gets so hot that perspiration will not cool the body down. It’s a real risk in coming years that will result in death, particularly if it combines with peak AC load to black out a grid for several days.

Texas is not there yet, but IIRC this has already happened in India and parts of the Middle East. https://www.kxan.com/news/national-news/what-is-a-wet-bulb-t...

Re: Texas rules requiring water breaks for construction workers will be nullified

#22

Post by Nasrudith »

nonstopdev wrote: post #4

This would be interesting to see how it plays out and if the market solves this on its own. While a regulation and mandates usually requires an employer to keep extra records, cause confusion for a lot of smaller companies trying to comply based on each different governments rules, as well as generate more government costs to enforce, the Texas heat is nothing to mess with just as in many states in the south. I would…

Really this case is a "don't whizz on the electric fence" law. That is the law isn't for anybody rational and remotely intelligent. We know that most people don't whizz on electric fences, but the preventable damage done by those stupid enough to do it without the law is a certainty, and having the law makes things smoother. The question "Did they offer the required water breaks." is easier to answer than "Were they negligent?" even if they are synonymous in this case.

Re: Texas rules requiring water breaks for construction workers will be nullified

#23

Post by rhplus »

yostrovs wrote: post #6
nonstopdev wrote: post #4

This would be interesting to see how it plays out and if the market solves this on its own. While a regulation and mandates usually requires an employer to keep extra records, cause confusion for a lot of smaller companies trying to comply based on each different governments rules, as well as generate more government costs to enforce, the Texas heat is nothing to mess with just as in many states in the south. I would…

Here where I live we don't have mandated by government bathroom breaks, yet my employer lets me go whenever I want.

I think you’re vastly underestimating how petty and controlling lower management can be to workers who are much closer to minimum wage.

Go search https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/ for “bathroom” and you’ll find plenty of examples of low wage workers being limited in how long and how often they are allow to relieve themselves.

Re: Texas rules requiring water breaks for construction workers will be nullified

#25

Post by thebradbain »

As a lifelong Texan who now lives in California— Texas has absolutely no problem overriding municipal and county governments, the biggest of which are solidly blue. It’s a pattern they’ve repeated for over 20 years, often more so as a show of force than anything that affects things at a state level:

- Local “bag charges” and “bag bans” on non-reusable plastic bags at grocery stores were outlawed in 2018.

- Anything that has to do with attempts at gun restrictions in cities (auditoriums/malls/etc) gets overridden every year.

- Just this year, the state passed a law with explicit language exclusively targeting its biggest county, Harris County (Houston), disbanding its election commissioner position and that the state AG has the ability to re-call elections in the county if he believes there was “enough fraud”.

There’s so much more, but “local control” is not a term which holds much water in Texas. The other side of the coin is that, unlike California, this philosophy is also reflected in Texas’ zoning codes, and as such it’s much easier and much more consistent across cities to build — developers in cities begin to bemoan when permits take more than 3 months in Texas cities, whereas in Los Angeles years would be the norm

Re: Texas rules requiring water breaks for construction workers will be nullified

#26

Post by cratermoon »

nonstopdev wrote: post #4

This would be interesting to see how it plays out and if the market solves this on its own. While a regulation and mandates usually requires an employer to keep extra records, cause confusion for a lot of smaller companies trying to comply based on each different governments rules, as well as generate more government costs to enforce, the Texas heat is nothing to mess with just as in many states in the south. I would…

"It's time we stopped believing in the Free Market Fairy" https://bitworking.org/news/2008/01/the-free-market-fairy/>

Re: Texas rules requiring water breaks for construction workers will be nullified

#27

Post by darth_avocado »

Buttons840 wrote: post #18
darth_avocado wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point the argument “the market will solve the problem by its own” is tiring. The whole argument that if a company doesn’t offer X, then people won’t work for it and go to other companies only works when there are others that offer it and don’t cut on Y and Z because they offer X. There are countless labor issues that historically “weren’t solved by the market” because they were the right thing to do until a l…

I've been asking: When the things that happen in a healthy free market aren't happening, what does that mean? (Maybe too abstract because I haven't got an answer from those I ask.)

Either the market isn’t healthy or the understanding of what happens in a healthy market is wrong.

Re: Texas rules requiring water breaks for construction workers will be nullified

#28

Post by fwlr »

Those mandatory water break laws confuse me. Is it because businesses are refusing to let their workers take water breaks? Or because workers don’t realize when they need a water break? I find it hard to believe either of those things are generally true*.

*: Perhaps there are some outliers - businesses that genuinely slavedrive their workers, or workers that genuinely can’t tell when they’re about to die. But are those businesses or workers likely to pay much attention to these laws anyway?

Re: Texas rules requiring water breaks for construction workers will be nullified

#29

Post by denimnerd42 »

Is this specific regulation really an issue? I understand heat related deaths do occur but is it because they are not allowed water breaks every 4!! hours?

If you're working out there in 115+ heat index like June, July, August, September bring you're going to need a water break every 20-40 minutes, especially decked out in full PPE. I don't see overseers out there driving these Hispanic laborers to work 8 hours straight. They can take a break whenever they want, after all who is going to stop them. They need the job done right?

This seems like the type of regulation pushed by those who never have worked out in the heat before. Who in their right mind would even waste time passing a mandatory once every 4 hour water break? That's useless.

Re: Texas rules requiring water breaks for construction workers will be nullified

#30

Post by technofiend »

postpawl wrote: post #3
paulryanrogers wrote: post #2

Quite a horrific solution to a concern about variance among local governments. Perhaps they truly believe the market will solve work concerns / deaths, despite past evidence that they get brushed aside.

Abbott wants major Texas cities to have as little control as possible since they’re mostly majority democrat. Doubt they’re even thinking about markets solving problems.

Correct. It's a byproduct of a so-called Death Star law: https://www.texasstandard.org/stories/texas-death-star-house...

This is meant to disempower local jurisdictions which pass laws contrary to Republican aims. Everything from Harris County's motor voter law that let people drive through vote to DAs saying they won't enforce state laws.

See also a law that targets elections in counties over a certain size, of which there is only one and leans Democrat.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/28/us/texas-voting-laws-harr...

Post reply on HN