# Working In The Heat



## rjmoses (Apr 4, 2010)

This article on MSN got me thinking.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/extreme-heat-is-killing-america%e2%80%99s-farm-workers/ar-BBMJthP?li=BBnb7Kz

I kinda feel this is a crock of bull. I learned from my grandfather to work early mornings and evenings when it is cooler. Unless absolutely necessary, I take down time from about 1PM to about 3PM. Often, I'm out working until dark.

So this article got me to thinking (and being more than a little suspicious of the writer) "Farm workers are working around the clock....." ?????? "...in conditions most of us would not accept." ????? (I could say something about getting off their fat desk chairs, but decorum prevents it.

Why don't these Florida workers do the same kind of thing? Work when it's cooler. Is it necessary to do what they're doing during the heat of the day? Is it for the convenience of the business? Any smart businessman knows that it is important to maximize productivity, so having people work when they are most productive only makes economic sense.

Construction workers hereabouts work from 6AM to 2PM most days. Some days they start at 5AM.

I guess I just don't understand....

Ralph


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## Farmerbrown2 (Sep 25, 2018)

This guy is definitely a flake , second sentence says it all. Workers who work in A/C when it’s 92 degrees have it bad enough. I would bet a guy like this has worked very little in the heat. I would love to see this guy lay blacktop on a 100 degree day. The world has had really good temperature control for only about 100 years , I would love to see how bad things get in the next 100 years but thankfully I won’t have too.


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## somedevildawg (Jun 20, 2011)

Most interstate road construction here in the summer is done at night (they have it lit up like a stadium).....work generally starts at 8pm. This is done primarily because of traffic flows, and I would imagine that productivity and safety is increased. Other roads are done during daylight hours but usually early morning until just after lunch, you see very few crews working on roads after 3pm, except during winter months. Adapt, improvise and overcome.....


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## CowboyRam (Dec 13, 2015)

I think this guy is just using this to promote his Global Warming narrative. Standing around the air conditioner, what a crock of shit; all the buildings I have been in that have central air, well it come from diffusers from the ceiling. Unless those people learned how to fly, they are not standing around the air conditioner.


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

This is just a hack piece by another libtard with an agenda... It's a bunch of greenie enviro-whackos and activist organizers looking to stir up trouble. They're trying to bring OSHA into the fray-- Lord help us LOL. Notice the emphasis on "global warming climate change" nonsense as well...

It is what it is. I picked many a bale of cotton on old open station cotton pickers, a lot of times without even a dinky cloth umbrella, in long sleeve shirts and pants in 100 degree plus heat. Fixed a lot of fence, baled a lot of hay, chased a lot of cows in that same heat. I nearly heat stroked one time when I worked for United Gas Pipe Line Co. when I was right out of mechanic's school... we were sent on a high-90's day to cut the grass around a cable suspension bridge holding up a 36 inch gas pipeline over the Brazos River... the cable anchors were about 3 football fields away across the field, 10x10x100 foot concrete caissons set 90 feet deep in the ground. That was the easy part-- my older crew chief, Hank, cut those with the tractor and shredder and the other rights-of-way on the property. Unfortunately for me, I had to cut inside the storm-fenced razor-wire topped 40x100 or so foot fenced in bases under the towers themselves... It wouldn't have been so bad except for a few things-- 1) it was nearly 100 degrees, 2) there was only a man-gate through the storm fence/razor wire (to keep kids from climbing the towers and getting killed, or walking across the pipeline over the river or doing other stupid stuff that would get them killed, as the pipe was at least 25 feet up in the air and about 100 feet above the river and probably 1/3 of a mile long-- that's why the caissons were enclosed in razor-wire topped storm fence as well-- keep them from climbing out the cables to the towers... the suspension cables were at least 20 feet off the ground at the lowest point outside the fence). 3) the man-gate meant we could only use a walk-behind power-pull industrial mower inside the fence, and 4) the towers had been sandblasted and repainted the year before, so there was about 1-2 feet thick black beauty glass bead sandblasting media covering the ground inside the fence, 5) with about 6-7 foot tall johnsongrass and weeds growing up through it. SO I waded in and got started... mowed most of it but the closer I got to the towers the deeper the black beauty sandblasting crap was, to the point where the mower was scrambling to stay on top of it and every step I took my feet sank in the loose "sand" enough that it closed over my boots, and it was SO hot it felt like red hot lava on my feet... By the time I finished up I was panting like a dog, and if it hadn't been for the power pull mower dragging me along behind it I'd have never made it to the truck. My vision closed in to a black tunnel and I couldn't see for part of the trip. My vision FINALLY came back enough by the time I got to the truck I got a sip of water and crawled under the trailer into the shade to cool off some, laid there panting like a dog. Hank came back and asked me WHY I didn't get in the truck and fire up the A/C... I told him for awhile I couldn't see and basically I couldn't think, either... Dad heat stroked at about my age and spent the night in the hospital in Eagle Lake when I was a kid, dipping out the grain tank on the combine in 100 degree heat after the auger drive box broke, and the fat cat neighbor he was custom cutting for sat on the porch sipping a lemonade and watched...

I learned to be more careful after that. I remember one time we had a sun gear go out in a cotton picker drum, so we were tearing it apart to replace it. It was like 104 degrees that day, BEFORE the "heat factor" of the humidity, and we were working inside a grease-filled cotton picker gearcase up to our elbows in solid grease... We couldn't sweat through it, and we were just smothered in grease-- my brother, Dad, and I would work about 5-10 minutes, be panting like dogs and weak as kittens, and retreat under the carport and collapse in front of the shop fan, which was just blowing hot air around. Finally after working a couple hours we decided to just quit for the day, cleaned up and went inside and took a few hours nap, then worked all night on it and got it fixed... Finished up in the wee hours of the morning...

Notice too the repeated "they're paid by the piece not by the hour" or whatever-- more activist BS... BTW-- show me any BLUEBERRY FARMERS who pay "by the piece" LOL You couldn't count that high LOL My nephew work for Pioneer seed corn division as a field supervisor and he had to jump on his field hands after he found them walking out of the fields with armloads of corn tassels when they were detasseling... they thought they were getting paid "by the piece" and he assured them NO, it's "by the hour" LOL Yeah a lot of fruit pickers and stuff are paid "by the piece" or by the pound, not by the hour... way it's always been way it'll always be, but to the "ACTIVIST" types, that's "unfair" because you can't get paid $15 bucks an hour to stand around and do nothing if you're paid on RESULTS... Oh well... Great Grandpa Bushnell and Grandpa Leon both had hand-pickers and hand-choppers back in the day to chop and pick cotton, (before herbicides and mechanical cotton pickers) and you dragged your tow sack, pulled it to the end of the row, walked up to the scale, they'd weigh it on the beam scale (which is still in the barn somewhere BTW) then you dumped it in the cotton trailer and went back to work. They duly noted the amount by your name in their little book and totalled it up and paid you accordingly at the end of the day (or when the job was done). BTW had to provide room in the barn for them to sleep and a place to cook, at least one meal a day Grandma cooked (lunch) for them, and water for drinking, washing clothes, and washing off. Grandpa spoke fluent German and Spanish, so he hired Mexicans because they worked harder and did a better job. Frank Fojtik, the neighbor across the road, spoke only Czech and English, so he hired blacks, and got done way slower and left more cotton behind...

You gotta be careful and NOBODY should be allowed to 'slave drive' someone into the ground, but at the same time, if someone CHOOSES to RUN THEMSELVES into the ground, not much you can do about it. We had a young guy, HS football star athlete in great shape, from our church, who was running miles and miles in the heat trying to get ready for the entrance tests to the police academy here in the county seat town last year... he was on some remote trail in the back of one of the big county parks and collapsed with heat stroke and by the time they found him and took him to the hospital he was nearly dead. Next day he was brain-dead and died within 3-4 days. Really a shame. It was particularly stupid as well because he COULD have gone to a different police academy (the one I went to) that had NO physical tests at all for entry... unlike the county police academy here... Once you have your peace officer's license, who cares?? Every department has their own physical requirements and some are tougher than others... Either way you start out as a know-nothing rookie and have to work your way up from there; that's when the REAL work starts anyway... So basically he ran himself to death for NOTHING... He could have gotten in to the academy he was "training for" easily anyway with his abilities...

Just another hack piece article that basically admits "there's nothing we can really do" but in typical libtard manner "insists we DO SOMETHING anyway"-- like another law or regulation will make everything better... (gag).

Later! OL J R


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