OSHA Scales Back Farmworker Heat Enforcement
OSHA removed inspection targets from its heat program in April, eliminating enforcement tools as farmworkers face peak summer conditions and record heat-related workplace deaths.
In April 2026, the Trump administration gutted federal heat protection enforcement for farmworkers. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) removed specific inspection goals that had driven a historic spike in workplace safety inspections, undoing years of progress just as summer temperatures peak.
The rollback is stark. Between 2022 and 2024, OSHA’s Heat National Emphasis Program created a goal for each region to double heat inspections. That mandate pushed annual heat-related workplace inspections to approximately 7,000 per year — a stunning jump from only 200 per year between 2015 and 2020. Enforcement had teeth. Inspectors had targets. Companies knew they might face scrutiny.
Now those targets are gone. OSHA replaced specific inspection goals with vague language promising to conduct “outreach and compliance assistance” and conduct inspections “where there is evidence of heat-related hazards on heat priority days.” Translation: enforcement is now optional, not mandatory.
The timing is catastrophic for farmworkers. Farmworkers are 35 times more likely to die from heat stress than workers in other industries. A fifth of all reported heat-related deaths between 2017 and 2022 were agricultural workers — a concentration that reflects both the job’s exposure and the near-complete absence of federal protection. Only four states — California, Oregon, Washington, and Colorado — have mandated heat protections for farmworkers. Most of the country’s farmworkers have none.
The rollback also narrowed OSHA’s target list. Fruit and tree nut farming — where heat exposure is extreme and workers are often migrant and undocumented, making them less likely to report violations — was removed from the priority inspection industries. Hog and pig farming, animal slaughtering, and greenhouse work were added instead, a shift that critics say deprioritizes the crops and labor conditions that affect the most vulnerable workers.
Farmworkers already bear the cost of inadequate protection. Workers report being fired for taking breaks, being sent home without pay for resting in the shade, and receiving no training on how to recognize or manage heat stress. Younger workers have fainted in fields because they didn’t know heat sickness was coming. In the absence of federal rules, employers set their own standards — which often means no standards at all.
The removal of OSHA’s inspection goals comes as farm bankruptcies spike, putting even more pressure on farmworkers’ wages and conditions. When farms are drowning in debt, heat safety is treated as a luxury. The most vulnerable workers — those without legal status, those dependent on a single employer, those with the fewest options — absorb the risk.
Enforcement mattered. The Heat National Emphasis Program proved that visible, mandatory inspection goals could move the needle. Now, as temperatures rise and the climate crisis intensifies agricultural working conditions, OSHA has handed the power back to employers to decide who gets protection and who doesn’t.
For farmworkers spending July and August in fields that can exceed 100 degrees, the message is clear: no one’s watching.
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