Last month, California's workplace safety agency, Cal/OSHA, issued a warning to employers to protect workers as triple-digit heat spread across Southern California, the Central Valley, and the Sacramento Valley. The record heat that continued throughout summer creates a safety risk for employees.
The rules are specific. Outdoors, employers must give workers free, fresh, cool drinking water — enough for one quart per person per hour, all shift long. Once it passes 80 degrees, they must set up shade big enough for everyone on break to sit down. Below 80 degrees, shade has to be available if a worker asks. Anyone who feels overheated can take a cool-down rest of at least five minutes (Cal. Code Regs., tit. 8, § 3395(c)–(d)). At 95 degrees, employers for farms, construction sites, landscaping crews, oil and gas work, and the hauling of farm goods or heavy materials have extra observation, communication, and cool-down rest period duties called high heat procedures (§ 3395(e)). Indoor workplaces have their own water and cool-down rules starting at 82 degrees (§ 3396).
Here is a common situation. Say you haul mulch for a landscaping company. It is 99 degrees, there is no shade, and the water cooler ran dry at 10 a.m. You tell your supervisor. Two days later you are cut from the schedule.
That action is probably a violation. Under Labor Code § 6310(a), an employer cannot fire you or discriminate against you in any way because you complained about safety or health — to Cal/OSHA, to another government agency with safety duties, to your employer, or to your own representative. The law also protects workers who start or testify in a proceeding about these rights, or use those rights for themselves or their coworkers; who serve on a workplace safety committee; and who report a work injury, illness, or death, ask to see the company's injury records, or use any other right under the federal safety law. You do not have to call the state first. Telling your boss counts and it’s usually best to complain in text messages or emails and keep a copy of the complaints for proof. A worker punished for a good-faith complaint about unsafe conditions is entitled to the job back, plus lost wages and benefits (§ 6310(b)).
Source: https://www.dir.ca.gov/DIRNews/2026/2026-63.html
Source: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=6310&lawCode=LAB
Source: https://www.dir.ca.gov/title8/3395.html
Source: https://www.dir.ca.gov/title8/3396.html