health and safety

By Public Citizen - Common Dreams, October 20, 2023

Ninety-five percent of counties in the United States faced alerts from the National Weather Service (NWS) from May to September, 2023, according to a new map released today by Public Citizen.

The sweeping scale of excessive heat alerts issued across the U.S. from reveal the dire nationwide need to safeguard workers from heat-related illness, injury, and death. As the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) continues to consider rules to protect workers from excessive heat, individual workers lack protections from workplaces that have yet to adapt to the nationwide epidemic of extreme heat .

“National Weather Service heat alerts broadcast the critical need to exercise simple safety precautions — reducing strenuous activities, taking refuge from the sun, drinking plenty of water, and using air-conditioning or fans,” said Dr. Juley Fulcher, health and safety advocate with Public Citizen’s Congress Watch. “But employers dictate whether workers can take these life-saving measures. An OSHA safety rule is essential ensure workers are protected.”

The National Weather Service issues alerts when the heat index is expected to reach or exceed 100ºF, with some variability based on local temperature norms. These high temperatures place serious limits on the body’s ability to cool itself, leading to a breakdown of the systems that keep us alive.

Nearly 800 counties across 16 states were under extreme heat alerts for more than a month between May and September, 2023, with seven states enduring more than two months of nearly unlivable temperatures. From coast to coast, 1,100 counties suffered through more than three weeks of deadly heat. Portions of every state in the continental U.S. were under at least a full week of heat alerts.

OSHA began developing a heat standard in 2021, but the statute-driven process takes an average of seven to eight years. Congress has the power to speed up that process. In July 2023, Senators Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) and Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) and Reps. Judy Chu (D-Calif.), Bobby Scott (D-Va.), Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), and Alma Adams (D-N.C.), reintroduced the Asuncíon Valdivia Heat Illness, Injury and Fatality Prevention Act, legislation that, if passed, would direct OSHA to issue an interim heat standard until a final standard can be completed.

“Our map of extreme heat alerts faced by the vast majority of workers in 2023 is a warning of the the deadly conditions workers will confront in 2024,” said Fulcher. “We must have an OSHA heat standard in place before next summer. Congress must act immediately to ensure employers provide commonsense protections for workers.”

By Cristen Hemingway Jaynes - EcoWatch, October 20, 2023

As participants and representatives from nearly 200 countries gear up for next month’s COP28 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Dubai, some of the preparations have been found to be very dangerous and potentially deadly.

According to a new investigation, This Weather Isn’t for Humans, by nonprofit human rights research and advocacy group FairSquare, migrant workers were working outdoors in extreme heat last month to prepare conference facilities for the talks.

The work conditions they were subjected to posed serious health threats and were “in clear violation” of laws intended to protect workers from the country’s harsh climate, a press release from FairSquare said.

On two days last month, workers were working outside in high heat and humidity during the “midday ban,” a law that prohibits working outdoors during the hottest parts of the day in the summer in order to protect workers from dangerous heat exposure, according to testimonies and visual evidence gathered by researchers, reported The Guardian.

By Veronica Serrano - Texas Climate Jobs Project, October 13, 2023

Texas Climate Jobs Project and the Texas AFL-CIO released the following statement in response to the Department of Energy’s decision to award the HyVelocity Hub application federal grant dollars to continue its pursuit of developing a hydrogen hub in the Gulf Coast region of Texas:

“A hydrogen hub in the Gulf Coast region has the potential to transform industries in Texas, and for more than a year labor organizations in Texas have raised concerns about the lack of transparency involved in the project as well as its impact on workers. Now that these corporations are poised to receive taxpayer dollars to develop this hub, it is critical to ensure that all involved in this project redouble efforts to ensure that public funds are used to create safe, family-sustaining jobs.

We support the concept of hydrogen hubs and what they can bring to Texas, but we are disappointed in the lack of any real commitment from Texas applicants to ensure that workers have a voice in the process. The Biden administration has consistently delivered for workers around clean energy projects across the country and we urge them to hold Texas applicants accountable to make sure that the needs of workers and communities in Texas are addressed on these hydrogen hub projects. 

Workers in Texas face growing racial and economic inequality and worsening safety standards, which makes strong labor standards ever more necessary today. Texas is the only state in the U.S. that doesn’t require employers to provide workers’ compensation insurance and Texas also leads in worker deaths. We are ready to work together to ensure that the growing hydrogen industry in Texas creates jobs in which workers can support their families and where they can go home safely every night.”

By Union Jake and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, October 3, 2023

By staff - FairSquare, October 2023

A FairSquare investigation has found that in September 2023, migrant construction workers on Dubai’s COP28 site were put to work outdoors in extreme heat that posed very serious threats to their health and could be fatal, and in clear violation of the United Arab Emirates’ laws designed to protect outdoor workers from its harsh climate. With temperatures in Dubai as high as 42 degrees celsius at the time, the combination of heat and humidity workers were likely exposed to exceeds upper limits where construction work can safely be performed, according to internationally recognised standards. FairSquare has obtained evidence that in early September over two separate days, work took place on at least three separate outdoor sites on Expo City between 12.30pm and 3pm, the hottest part of the day.

The sites were located at the Dubai Exhibition and Convention Centre and the Opportunity site, both of which will be within or adjoining the “blue zone”, the UN managed zone where world leaders will rub shoulders during the COP28 climate conference in November this year. An Expo City representative told media last month that the site was undergoing “major, major preparations in many areas” to get ready for COP28.

The work, which involved small numbers of workers on each site – took place during the summer time “midday ban”, a 150 minute block each day when for three months of the year all outdoor work is banned by law across the UAE. The UAE government claims that this protects workers from sustaining injuries from the country’s extreme heat

Download a copy of this publication here (PDF).

By Chris Townsend, Union Jake, and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, September 29, 2023

By Amy Mayer - Civil Eats,September 27, 2023

In the summer months, Flor Sanchez and the members of her harvest crew rise before dawn and arrive at a cherry orchard in Washington state’s Yakima Valley when there is only the slightest hint of daylight.

“We use headlamps,” she says, to carry ladders to the trees. Climbing up into the branches to harvest the ripe fruit in near-darkness, she says, “seems a little dangerous.” Headlamps cast shadows that can make it difficult to see the fruit. Setting up ladders in the dark also poses a danger.

Elizabeth Strater, director of strategic campaigns with United Farm Workers, says for field crops like onions and garlic, harvesting at night by headlamp or flood lights poses less risk than picking tree fruit because ladders aren’t needed, the short plants don’t create shadows, and workers know exactly what to pick even if they can’t completely see what they’re doing. The produce itself is also more durable. Winegrape harvest also often takes place at night.

Across super-hot regions, nocturnal harvest, as Strater calls the practice, has become increasingly common. As climate change pushes summer temperatures higher on more consecutive days, and scientists are forecasting even warmer years ahead, more workers may find themselves in the field at night and in the early morning hours. And while some safety measures have been put in place, more data is needed to assess the challenges workers face.

By Dan, Union Jake and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, September 22, 2023

By Alexandra Bradbury - Labor Notes, September 20, 2023

The death of UPS driver Chris Begley, 57, who collapsed in August while making a delivery in 103-degree Texas heat, was no isolated incident.

Monitoring co-workers for signs of heat exhaustion has become a routine feature of the job, says fellow driver Seth Pacic, a shop steward in Begley’s union, Teamsters Local 767.

Pacic has learned to discern over the phone when a co-worker needs to find air conditioning ASAP—and when they’re deteriorating so badly that he should call paramedics and brave management’s wrath.

The problem is that managers are always trying to speed workers up, and reluctant to call an ambulance because they report those numbers to higher-up management.

When a supervisor reached Begley, they offered him medical attention—but he refused it, so they took him home. “Therein lies one of the biggest problems: these supervisors aren’t trained in what to do about heat,” Pacic said.

“You can’t trust people when they say they’re ok. Because of the nature of heat exhaustion, your mental acuity is first thing to go. You get really foggy-minded.

“People get single-minded on trying to get home and get into the AC; they almost get fixated. That can be really dangerous if they push through, trying to get done with their day—or a supervisor pushes them.”

Four days after Begley’s collapse, he took a turn for the worse. He was taken to a hospital and life-flighted to another, where he died of massive organ failure.

Pacic wonders if IV fluids right away could have saved Begley’s life. Pacic himself has overheated on the job three times, and says his recovery took two days when he got IV fluids—versus two weeks when he didn’t.

Last year management allowed another driver, Pacic’s friend, to drive himself home despite heatstroke so bad he was vomiting; he totaled his car and sustained a brain injury. Another UPS driver was already in the same ICU.

Pacic believes air conditioning in the delivery truck would have saved his friend. When you overheat you’re supposed to seek out a “cool zone,” like an air-conditioned library or McDonald’s. But those are few and far between in sprawling residential areas.

AC in the truck would mean “a rolling cool zone that follows you wherever you go.”

The year before that, a 23-year-old driver died outside a Waco facility after overheating and wandering in circles. He had never clocked out, but rather than go look for him, management apparently falsified his timecard to close out the shift. His worried mother eventually came looking.

After great fanfare and consulting with Gatorade and Nike, earlier this year UPS issued everyone cooling sleeves and hats.