‘It’s become unbearable’: Texas workers toil through extreme heatwave

By Michael Sainato - The Guardian, June 30, 2023

Last week as the heat dome scorched Texas, Gloria Machuca arrived for work at a McDonald’s in Houston to find the air conditioning wasn’t working. The temperature inside the restaurant was similar to the temperature outside – at least 90F. It was 7.30am.

Temperatures would rise another 10 degrees that day but already, Machuca said, the intense heat was making her eyes burn. She and five of her co-workers walked out on their jobs.

A third week of a record-breaking heatwave has placed at least 40 million people in the US under heat alerts, with numerous Texas cities experiencing unprecedented heat.

Many workers in Texas and throughout the southern US currently have no heat protection while working outdoors, exposed to the sun and intense, prolonged heat.

“When I came in, it really was so hot. I decided I need to go on strike. I told my co-workers because it is way too hot here and I knew they were all extremely hot as well,” said Machuca. “If we don’t work, they don’t make money. They’re making money off our sweat and it’s not fair,” she said. “It’s time they truly value us.”

Marsam Management, which operates the McDonald’s store in Houston, said in a statement: “As soon as we learned that one of our three air conditioning units had malfunctioned, we immediately brought portable air coolers and fans into the kitchen while technicians made their repairs, which were completed that same day.”

But workers went on strike again on 27 June to demand a permanent fix to the air conditioning issues and workers walked out at a second McDonald’s location in Houston over the same issues – air conditioning not working properly.

“I couldn’t take the heat any more. It was way too hot inside and I said I have to do something because they’re not listening to us,” said Marina Luria Ramírez, a McDonald’s worker at the second location who walked out. “It’s almost like you’re being choked, it’s such a horrible feeling. And there’s times where I feel like I’m going to faint and I try to drink water but sometimes our mouths are so dry, like even water doesn’t work. We try anything we can to recover but it really is a physically tolling and despairing experience.”

Read the rest of the article here.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author.