House Bill 2127, which takes effect on Sept. 1, will do away with local rules that require water breaks for construction workers. The cities of Austin and Dallas, for example, require 10-minute breaks every four hours. San Antonio officials had been considering a similar ordinance.
“We are human beings who need respect,” Martínez said. “We really need to be allowed to work without problems, without any barriers … Believe me, we are dying inside those buildings when they take away our water and our [break] time.”
The law is a ten minute break every four hours?? That’s fucking bullshit already!
Where I live it 15 minutes after 2.5 hours if you’re only working 5 hours or less. 2 hours if you’re you’re there all day, but you get your 30-minute lunch after 4 hours, then a fifteen minute break every two hours worked after that.
I worked at a concrete yard in Ontario, Canada for a few years. Breaks due to heat were given based on temps. At one point it was 15 minute breaks with Gatorade provided - every hour.
Americans desperately need to reestablish the proper hierarchy of power.
You have removed child labor laws across a number of states, human rights are basically done, labor has returned to 19th century standards.
So much blood was lost for nothing.
If an employer doesn’t allow you a water break in this heat then it’s time to leave them without employees.
So like what does it take for people to revolt? are they just going to stand idly by while their fellows actually die, waiting for their own turn to stroke out from overworking and dehydration?
And here I am contemplating what kind of world we live in where people working a regular job can’t just get up and go drink as much as they need whenever they need… I mean ok sure don’t drop the heavy steel beam you carry with a coworker until you have it in place, but after you finished a task it shouldn’t take more than a “I’m going to take a drink” and off you go. Also sure be prepared to face consequences if you don’t get anything done… But it surely can’t be more detrimental to your work output to drink for a minute every so often than not drinking at all and getting fatigue etc.
In most parts of the USA most children are taught to ask for things such as water and bathroom breaks at school, up til senior year of highschool. When the kids do not listen they are reprimanded/punished. This leads to brainwashing. Some young adults never do break out of the habit of asking. This leads to situations of dehydration and death.
It’s straight up bizarre having a 25 year old man walk up to me(30F) and ask to use the restroom or get a drink of water. Granted I was also brainwashed til about 22. It dawned on me one day it was straight up dumb to ask for water or to use the restroom.
I don’t see how school is the same scenario at all. In school, you have a natural break every 45 minutes or so, and can choose to do your business then, rather than disrupt class for everyone. Also, kids do need to learn some control, to pick appropriate times when you can. Most importantly, too many kids abuse the freedom to disrupt or skip class: they have no reason to care about a reprimand whereas an adult probably has their income on the line.
Of course, after saying that, I do have to add that my ex is a teacher who does not want kids to ask. She controls the potential for abuse with a token (beanie baby) allowing only two to go at once, and she has the privilege of a private school with higher standards for their kids
By “natural break”, ate you talking about the times between classes? If so, I do not know of a single school around the area that I grew up in that gave their students more than 3 minutes to get to the next class. That wasn’t even enough time for us to go to our lockers to get the next classes books; we all had to carry enormous bags that would fit all of our morning, and then afternoon classes books. There was absolutely no time to use the bathroom during that time. Even lunch time wasn’t enough, because they didn’t give us enough time to eat, forget about doing anything else. If you chose to use the bathroom at lunch, you were choosing not to eat that day.
It’s crazy to me that anyone could sit on their ass in AC all day and even consider speaking to take water breaks away from construction workers. I went in figuring they got 10 minutes per hour and it’s only 10 minutes per four hours?! Fuck that noise, they need more time to rest and hydrate. What the fuck is wrong with people.
If the politicians can do those jobs under those conditions for a week, have at it
The actual benefit would be some state reps would die during the exercise, and well, that’s enough
Please make Abbot participate.
Wtf is this shit… If you’re overheated and dehydrated, stop, drink water.
It’s pretty simple
Ribbit
Greg Abbott is a little piss baby.
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It feels pretty shitty to be a disabled person scrolling by and seeing comments like this. I don’t think that Abbott being a shitty person makes your statement any less hurtful to non-shitty disabled people
Bro, americans are slaves. I thought they abolished slavery.
Only for everything other than punishment, and being poor is a crime in America.
If you’re too poor you’re literally sent to a gulag and forced into slave work.
They also practice slavery in their gulags.
And yet all the votes except for ONE came from the Republican party…
I don’t know if the person you’re replying to was mistaken, or whether votes are different from sponsors, but I’m seeing two Democrats here.
But that’s a minor clarification that doesn’t reduce the point at all - that’s a heck of a lot of Republicans
The person was me XD. Also God deam rep Guilean…
In hot weather OHSA requires water breaks, these laws are redundant.
When was the last time you had OSHA come crashing down on you the last time you scooted a manual fork around like a fucken razor scooter? Never? Same.
So how often do you think they will come to these people’s aid when they are having a heatstroke? Thats right. Never.
This will sound like I am not supporting workers, but hear me out. The intention of this law has nothing to do with taking away breaks. There’s this picture being painted of “state and evil construction companies” vs “workers and municipalities.” There’s actually two different fights here: workers vs evil construction companies and, the state vs municipalities. Focusing on the first one is important outside of how the state and city are bickering.
If you know your construction company will take away your 10 min / 4 hr water break because the city can no longer enforce that, that’s NOT the state’s fault because they’re taking a common sense approach to consolidating laws and eliminating bureaucracy. That is an evil fucking construction company.
You want to blame a lawmaker because they assumed no company would be evil enough to do that, fine, but think about that, and the entire scope of this bill, when deciding who to protest against.
EDIT: Sorry to come off looking like a republican shill. That was honestly not my intention. I’ll try harder next time. ESH except the workers trying to stay hydrated!
Every large company will squeeze every second of productivity out of a worker unless it’s forced not to.
The 8 hour work day was fought for by workers, the 5 day work week was fought for by workers, child labor laws were fought for by workers. These things required protests and often time violence to get, because companies were literally killing people through work until these things became labor law.
Removing labor protection does nothing but remove safety for workers and increase profits for corporations.
The free market doesn’t work and has never worked. Anyone who says otherwise is willfully ignorant of history and basic logical reasoning.
I get that, and I support everything you’re saying. It feels like the workers are getting played by the companies though. Workers should be lobbying for rights to the state, federal and municipal levels, but this feels like a “red herring” of a bill to get behind.
We should remove all those laws barring children working in mines, because common sense is that mining companies would not employ children… You are conflating two issues here. What the world ought to do, and what is really happening. Folks in Texas are struggling in the sun, and we ought to give them any tool we can do they can fight back.
Don’t be like that. I wasn’t talking about the world, or children in mines. Just this bill and the protests against its passing.
Shitty law, but it’s not even in effect yet.
People are already dying in the heat. Remove water breaks and it gets worse. Are you fucking 12?
Nah, let’s wait until the law passes and people die first, that’s a great idea! /s
Yeah, because as we know, no general contractor would leap at the opportunity to start early  lol
