The small business community is all too familiar with heavy-handed mandates from Washington, D.C. Every day, we deal with painful and often pointless regulations that drive up costs and drive down job creation. But some mandates are worse than others, and right now, President Donald Trump and Congress need to eliminate one of the worst burdens on Main Street I’ve ever seen.
For the past two years, the federal government has been moving to implement a so-called “heat standard” on small businesses like mine. President Joe Biden started the process, and a final mandate is expected in the near future. The mandate is designed to protect employees from excessive heat, which sounds unobjectionable. But the devil is in the details, and this mandate will hurt Florida families, workers, and small businesses like mine. Frankly, the rule doesn’t reflect how small businesses work in the real world.
I know how important it is to protect workers from excessive heat. I’ve been in the roofing business since 2004, and since 2022, I’ve run my own small roofing company. We have up to 10 employees at any given time, and pretty much every day, we deal with heat, because this is Florida. The sunshine feels even hotter when you’re working on a roof.
We go to extraordinary lengths to protect our people, because in a small business, your team is like your family. We provide special UV-resistant clothing, including shirts, hoods, hats and gloves. We provide drinks — including water and multiple electrolyte drinks — to help our team stay cool and replenish their bodies. We always build in regular breaks.
Our mantra to our team is simple: Work safe, work smart. We provide all the tools and resources to make that possible on Florida’s many hot days. And while I don’t like to praise competitors, I will say that every small business I know takes similar steps. Small businesses are serious about heat safety.
But the federal heat standard would burn us, because it doesn’t reflect reality. Basically, I’d have to document how much time each of my workers spends in temperatures above 80 degrees. I’d have to build out a reporting system to track this information every 15 minutes.
That’s not merely a nuisance. It’s a big and constant burden. I need to focus on running the business, helping customers and making payroll — not pulling out thermometers at multiple job sites every quarter-hour.
Complying with this mandate would force me to hire an additional staffer or two. Not to install roofs. Not to answer customers’ calls. Just to jot down temperatures and timestamps all day, all week, all year long. Hiring is expensive, and the money has to come from somewhere. This heat standard would probably force me to raise prices. Florida families are already dealing with the pain of inflation. They don’t need their roofing guy — and every other small business — to make money even tighter.
But it’s not just price hikes. The heat standard would also require a mandatory break every two hours. But again, that runs up against reality. A lot of days, my team is working on a roof when a storm suddenly rolls in. We have to clean up the jobsite to protect our equipment and the customer’s property. But what if the storm rolls in at the exact moment of a legally required break? We either need to do a rush job, which isn’t safe, or not finish the job, which isn’t safe. This mandate gets in the way of my ability to make the judgments that are safest for my team and our customers.
Trump should put the kibosh on the heat standard. I also hope Congress passes the Heat Workforce Standards Act, so no presidential administration can attempt a similar rule in the future. The federal government already meddles enough in small business. The last thing we need is another mandate that hurts our team and the Floridians we serve.
Jason Arnold is the owner of AllPro Roofing in Casselberry and a member of the National Federation of Independent Business.