Written by Dani Loesch and John Luker, Norfolk, Virginia

Construction workers during a heat wave in Columbus, Ohio, on July 1. Republicans in Washington are taking steps to roll back federal workplace heat protections as summer temperatures surge. (Brian Kaiser/The New York Times)

In the heat of summer, workers in Virginia and across the country risk their health and their lives to make ends meet. There are at least 3,389 heat-related injuries and 33 deaths every year on the job in the United States and experts believe that is an undercount. These heat-related injuries and deaths are preventable, but doing so would require employers to proactively implement safety measures — such as providing cool drinking water, access to shade and mandatory rest breaks — when temperatures become hazardous.

At a time when we’re experiencing record heat waves, too many employers are not and will not take those simple proactive steps to protect their workers, despite the business case to do so, including the billions of dollars in healthcare and workers’ compensation claims due to high temperatures. That is why we need our leaders to step up and make them do it.

And when workers need someone to step up you know you can count on U.S. Rep. Jen Kiggans to back down. She is a co-sponsor of a bill in Congress to stop the U.S. secretary of labor from finalizing, implementing and enforcing a proposed heat standard for the country. This isn’t a hypothetical; the bill was recently approved by the House Education and Workforce Committee along party lines, with Republicans voting to move it forward.

The good news for some Virginia workers is that the state legislature took action to create workplace heat standards for Virginia earlier this year. That bill requires the Virginia Department of Labor and Safety and Health Codes Board to create enforceable standards for heat illness prevention, including mandatory water, shade and rest periods. However, that doesn’t help Virginians in construction, agriculture and other industries who frequently cross into bordering states to work. Our care for the health and lives of workers shouldn’t just stop at our neighbors; we should be protecting workers in states that don’t have strong leaders to step up.

It’s morally wrong for Kiggans to try to stop a standard that needs to be there. We cannot trust every business is run by someone who genuinely cares about the health and well-being of their workers. Too many billionaires and business owners will choose their bottom line over the lives of working people every single time. With this bill, Kiggans put those billionaires and business owners first and is sacrificing hard working Virginians to do so.

This is far from the first time that Kiggans has thrown workers under the bus in favor of her favorite class of people — the billionaires. Kiggans was a key vote to pass the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” that slashed investment in clean energy, driving up energy costs and endangering good jobs in offshore wind, solar and other technologies and dramatically hiked up health care costs for more than 400,000 Virginians and millions of Americans.

All this hurt caused to working families, just to give a massive tax cut to a few billionaires.

Kiggans has proved again and again that if she is given a choice she’ll stand with billionaires and big business over workers. Her misguided effort to block a federal heat standard is just the latest example. These rules aren’t outlandish. It’s common sense to make sure workers have access to water and shade and can take a break when temps are rising. And thanks in part to the cuts to investments in clean energy that Kiggans voted for, we’ll be seeing more climate change and heat waves in our future.

Kiggans’s record speaks for itself. When Virginia workers need Kiggans, she fails to answer the call.

Published in the Virginian-Pilot on August 24, 2026