Victor Ramirez, who has worked in various warehouses in the Inland Empire over the past two decades, most recently at a facility in Fontana operated by Menasha Packaging, said many of the warehouses he's worked in did not have air conditioning or fans. In recent years, fans and air conditioning have become more common, but they "aren't very effective and those warehouses still feel hot," he said.

At his current job, where he unloads merchandise packaged by machinery, Ramirez said he often feels like he's suffocating, his chest hurts and he sweats particularly near forklifts and other equipment that generate heat.

"We need this rule in place right now. Workers need protections, they need training so they know the dangers of the job and working in heat," Ramirez said. "It's a basic right to work in a safe environment."

At one point some attendees at the meeting burst into chants of "What do we want? Heat protections. When do we want it? Now" and "Hey hey, ho ho, corporate greed has got to go."

Thomas asked San Diego Sheriff's deputies to step in, and protesters were asked to disperse.

Board members also voiced frustration, saying they said they had been left in the dark about why the vote had been postponed.

Laura Stock, a board member and director of the Labor Occupational Health Program at UC Berkeley, said she was frustrated to learn officials from the Department of Finance had decided at the 11th hour that more time was needed to study the impact of the proposed rules, especially in light of years already spent studying the issue.

"It is clear the public is angry. I and other board members here are equally frustrated at what happened," Stock said at the meeting. "It undermines the entire process of what we're doing here."

In a surprise twist, Thomas, who said he was in favor of the new rules, suggested the standards board should move forward with a vote — if only as a symbolic gesture to signal their dissatisfaction with the Department of Finance's decision to pull its support for the measure. The six board members unanimously voted to adopt the indoor heat standard.

"We are pleased with the courage of the Standards Board today to do the right thing and vote to protect workers from rising temperatures," said Sheheryar Kaoosji, executive director of the Warehouse Worker Resource Center, in an emailed statement. "The hottest years on record have occurred in the last ten years. That means the danger of working in high heat has become more acute in the time it has taken to finalize these standards."

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