Greg Abbott’s Water Break Ban Is Fatal for Texas Workers

I’m sorry … did I just read the phrase “water break ban”?

Surely I need to get my eyes checked. Surely Greg Abbott couldn’t be this evil? Yes, he’s denied rights to the trans community and passed an inhumane abortion ban, but that’s all just par for the GOP politician course. I’ve come to expect GOP-sponsored human rights abuses in the same way that I expect the sun to rise every morning. But to deny people WATER? That’s a human rights abuse for EVERYONE. Oh Greg, I didn’t know you had it in you!

A Texas postal worker recently died after exposure to the 115 degree heatwave that is currently incinerating Dallas, Texas. His name was Eugene Gates Jr, and he collapsed in the front yard of a home while delivering mail door to door. The homeowner attempted to give Gates CPR, but it was of no use. He passed away on the sidewalk.

While no cause of death has been officially released, it’s not hard to infer that the heat had something to do with the 66 year old man’s death. On June 21, a 35-year-old utility lineman died while working to fix a power outage in the state.

While Texas is being cooked by triple digit temperatures, Texas Governor Greg Abbott picked up a pen in his air conditioned office and signed what critics call the “Death Star” bill, which limits worker protections like water breaks and imposes Republican rule in local communities. Why is it called the “Death Star” bill? Because I doubt that Imperial engineers were afforded rest and water breaks while building a planet-busting death ray. The bill strips two key worker protection policies from 2010 and 2015 which required construction workers in Austin and Dallas to take a 10-minute break every four hours in order to get out of the sun and have a sip of water. That is already a dystopian-like break, especially considering that Texas temperatures regularly climb into the 100s every summer.

Opponents of the bill cite it as (no duh) dangerous. “There are so few protections for workers in this state,” said AFL-CIO President Rick Levy. “We are the deadliest state to work in. The Legislature has no business actively stripping away what protections we have and further threatening our health and safety.”

Supporters of the bill say it benefits business owners (surprise, surprise) and make it easier to comply with rules and regulations across the state. “One of my members has 19 active job sites in different jurisdictions. Having that consistency from job site to job site is really, really critical,” said Geoffrey Tahuahua, the president of the Central Texas chapter of the Associated Builders and Contractors of Texas.

Texas Democrats have said that they “disagree with [the bill] on principle”, adding that “Governor Abbott and Texas Republicans have for time immemorial spoken about the need to govern from the most local level possible—and we agree. We trust that community leaders know their communities far better than Texas Republicans at the Capitol do, and local decisions should be made by local school districts, cities, and counties—local leaders, mayors, and county judges who know their jurisdictions best.”

In light of the recent deaths of the two workers, Governor Abbott will likely be forced to rethink his policy. After all, it doesn’t bode well for one’s political career to be a champion of laws that have been compared to a tyrannical intergalactic empire. The governor’s decision has also been condemned by the Texas ACLU, who tweeted, “A U.S. postal worker and a utility lineman both died this week in Texas from working in extreme heat. Meanwhile, Gov. Abbott just signed #HB2127 banning cities from mandating rest and water breaks for certain workers. Abbott is once again putting Texans in harm’s way.”

I would like to add an addendum to the bill that stipulates that Greg Abbott is subject to his own water break policy, and that he’s going to simply have to go thirsty as long as Texans do. We’ll see how long his bill lasts then.

(via KXAN, featured image: Brandon Bell/Getty Images)