Arizona

By Amy Goodman, Jeff Goodell, and Ruth Cerezo-Mota - Democracy Now!, June 6, 2024

By Zachory Phillips - Construction Dive, May 23, 2024

As summer begins, some states prevent cities from mandating water breaks. Still, there are commonsense practices to protect workers from soaring temperatures.

When the calendar turns to summer’s traditional start on Memorial Day, the longer days can help contractors deliver projects more quickly than during winter months.

At the same time, summer days bring intense heat in many parts of the country — so hot that it risks the health of outdoor workers. The safety of laborers in hot climates has garnered national attention in recent years, especially as research indicates that air temperatures are increasing around the globe and will continue to rise.

In many parts of the world, last summer was the hottest in 2,000 years, according to NASA. Miami broke its record for the city’s hottest July ever recorded. Temperatures hit over 100 degrees 70 times in El Paso, Texas. Phoenix hit 110 degrees 54 times.

For outdoor workers in some states, this summer will also be the first with new rules — and in some cases, new prohibitions against mandates — when it comes to water breaks. Texas and Florida have passed laws to stop municipalities within their borders from requiring employers to provide water breaks to workers.

In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed House Bill 433, which will prevent cities and counties in the state from enacting their own heat safety regulations, starting in July.

The Texas law, dubbed “The Death Star Bill” by opponents, is currently in effect, though some cities, such as Houston and San Antonio, have sued over the legislation.

By Cristen Hemingway Jaynes - EcoWatch, April 1, 2024

A historic new law in Phoenix, Arizona, will provide thousands of outdoor workers in the hottest city in the country with protections from extreme heat.

In a unanimous vote, the Phoenix City Council passed an ordinance requiring that workers have easy access to rest, potable water and shade, as well as training to recognize signs of heat stress, a press release from the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health (National COSH) said. Vehicles with enclosed cabs must also have access to air conditioning.

“People who work outside and in hot indoor environments in Phoenix suffer unacceptably during our deadly summers, with too few protections,” said Katelyn Parady, a Phoenix-based expert on worker health and safety with National COSH, who assisted unions and local workers in advocating for the new extreme heat protection measures, in a press release from National COSH. “This ordinance is a critical first step toward getting workers lifesaving protections and holding employers accountable for safety during heat season. It’s also a model for how local governments can leverage their contracts to protect the workers who keep their communities running from climate change dangers.”

In 2023, there were a record 31 consecutive days of 110-plus degree heat in Phoenix. The city had 340 deaths related to the extreme heat, with 645 in Maricopa County, according to the county health department. Three-quarters of the heat-related fatalities happened outdoors.

In the United States, more than 40 percent of outdoor workers are Hispanic or Black, while making up approximately 32 percent of the population, reported The Guardian.

People of color and low-income workers are the most impacted by the hazards of extreme heat. According to Public Citizen, the risk of Latinx workers dying from heat stress is more than three times higher than that of their peers.

By Jessica Tovar, Ratha Lai, Alexis Sutterman, Jason Gumataotao, Anne Olivia Eldred, and Eric Veium - Local Clean Energy Alliance, January 13, 2024

By Greg Harman - Truthout, October 27, 2023

Throughout the blazing summer of 2023, reporters dutifully marked prior heat records being demolished repeatedly across the nation. New record-setting high temperatures were noted almost daily, and in city after city, a raft of new hottest June, July and August monthlong records were marked in towering fonts. Far fewer stories, however, sought to document what that extreme heat meant for working people.

“I’m surprised I lived through it,” said Mark Moutos, 65, leaning back against shaded concrete beneath a dusty highway off-ramp on San Antonio’s west side. “I kept thinking, ‘I’m getting older; maybe I just don’t handle the heat as well.’”

Today we know that the Earth has just experienced its hottest summer in more than 125,000 years — a crisis being driven by the rampant release of heat-trapping gases through the burning of fossil fuels. In Texas, 2023 now ranks as the state’s second-hottest year, just a degree-average behind 2011. But in many parts of the state — including San Antonio — it was the hottest summer since record keeping began. Meteorologists here also marked the most triple-digit days and the most 105-plus degree days, according to Spectrum News. And with just two inches of rainfall, it was the city’s third-driest summer.

Moutos, who has been living unhoused since leaving a job at a car dealership years ago, said he drank as much water as he could, but that making the trips to the corner store to collect fluids and food became increasingly arduous beneath this summer’s punishing heat dome. He passed out twice on the sidewalk near his camp, he said, and had to be revived by EMS teams.

By Gina Jiménez - Inside Climate News, August 15, 2023

Around 4 million people in the U.S. work as contractors for app services like DoorDash delivering pizzas, salads and pad thai. Those in areas with extreme heat are taking new measures to keep working through it.

Jessica Fawcett wakes up at 5:30 a.m. so she can deliver groceries and take-out orders throughout Tempe, Arizona by 6:30 a.m. She has been working 12- to 14-hour shifts for Instacart and DoorDash since December, but lately, the heat in Tempe has been making them harder. 

Some days, Fawcett must walk 20 minutes or climb four floors of stairs in a 116-heat index just to deliver one order. “I joke and say I don’t need to go to the gym because I already walk a lot with this heat,” she says, “I have lost so much weight.” 

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported this year’s June was the hottest the Earth has ever registered, and last week the Copernicus Climate Change Service said July was the hottest month ever recorded. High temperatures have continued this month, and over 100 million Americans were under an extreme heat alert at some point during July.

Nevertheless, app delivery workers in states with extreme weather, like Arizona and Texas, have kept working. Some feel the consequences on their health, and others are changing their working hours and carrying around cold water to survive long shifts in the blistering heat. 

“It feels like you are standing in an air fryer or a microwave,” says Hector Mejía, a 30-year-old who has been working doing DoorDash deliveries in Phoenix for around a year. He compares heat these days in Arizona with standing next to a campfire. “It’s almost hard to breathe.” 

The number of people working for app delivery platforms in the U.S. has exponentially increased in the last few years, from just over one million in 2018 to over four million in 2021, a recently published study found. That represents almost three times Amazon’s global workforce. 

While some platform workers like the flexibility of the job, they are especially vulnerable to inclement weather, sickness or any situation that keeps them from working since as independent contractors, their livelihood depends on them being on the streets.

In New York City, app delivery workers have been fighting to get an hourly minimum wage, but in the rest of the country, organization efforts are scarce, said Ligia Guallpa, the executive director of the Workers Justice Project, an organization that has supported app delivery workers in New York. 

By Siri Chilukuri - Grist, July 25, 2023

Climate change is creating dangerously hot conditions for construction workers, mail carriers, delivery drivers, airline workers, farmworkers, and more. Conditions that were previously uncomfortable are now unbearable, and the failure of companies — along with some state governments — to catch up to the new normal of heat has had deadly consequences. 

U.S. heat-related fatalities have increased in recent years, according to an NPR analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data that found the three-year average of worker heat deaths has doubled since the early 1990s. In the decade spanning 2011 to 2021, heat killed more than 436 people on the job. 

The myriad of factors that influence how heat is actually felt can be difficult to pin down, but a metric known as the heat index — which combines temperature and humidity — can get close. Last week’s heat index figures were eye-popping, reaching 119 degrees Fahrenheit in Corpus Christi, Texas, and 113 F in both Phoenix and Baton Rouge, Louisiana. 

“The heat index is what really worries me,” said Tevita ’Uhatafe, a former airlines-operation worker who’s now the vice president of the Texas chapter of the AFL-CIO union. “Because that’s what we’re actually dealing with when we’re working outside.” 

Airline-operations positions often mean working outdoors with limited shade. Plus, being surrounded by the sheet metal of airplanes and the concrete of the tarmac can make it even hotter during periods of extreme heat. Concrete, for example, can actually contribute to rising temperatures. 

By mid-century, a quarter of Americans will experience heat index temperatures above 125 F for at least one day a year, according to a statistical model by the nonprofit First Street Foundation. Areas surrounding the Texas-Mexico border will experience temperatures above 100 F for more than a third of the year. In addition, researchers from the Union of Concerned Scientists and the University of California Merced found that outdoor workers stand to lose more than $39.3 billion in income annually by the middle of the century from reduced hours due to heat risk. 

By staff - Labor Network for Sustainability, June 15, 2023

On June 14, the Teamsters and UPS agreed to tentative language to equip UPS vehicles with air conditioning systems, new heat shields, and additional fans, according to a union statement. The agreement will cover the 340,000 UPS workers who are members of the Teamsters union.

NBC News reports that temperature readings taken by workers in UPS trucks in Arizona and Florida have shown temperatures above 150 degrees. At least 145 UPS employees have been hospitalized for heat illnesses since 2015.

“Folks are super excited” about the heat agreement, said Zakk Luttrell, a UPS driver and union shop steward in Norman, Okla. “It’s not just about what’s cost effective and efficient anymore, it’s about keeping people alive.”

Meanwhile, 97% of UPS employees voting authorized a strike to start August 1. Such a strike would be the largest against a single employer in US history.

By Karla Schumann, Secretary Treasurer, Teamsters Local 104 - Press Release, July 23, 2021

Teamsters Local Union 104 supports the efforts of Representative Raul Grijalva and Congressional leaders from both sides of the aisle to pass the Save Oak Flat Act Bill S. 915/H.R. 1884, which will repeal the requirement for the United States Department of Agriculture to convey the 2.422 acres of Forest System land located in the Tonto National Forest in Pinal County, Arizona. known as Oak Flat, to Resolution Copper Mining, in exchange for various parcels of land owned by Resolution Copper:

Chi'Chil'Ba'Goteel, known as Oak Flat. is a Traditional Cultural Property located in southeastern Arizona that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Since time Immemorial, Native Americans have gone to Oak Flat to participate In ceremonies, to pray, to gather medicines and ceremonial items. and to seek and obtain peace and personal cleansing."

Tribal leaders and allies have been working for over eighteen years to protect Oak Flat from the foreign mining conglomerates Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton — who. through their joint venture with Resolution Copper Mining, LLC, seek to develop the largest and deepest copper mine in North America." 

Rio Tinto, BHP and Resolution Copper seek to extract the copper ore beneath Oak Flat using the block-cave or panel-cave mining method. This will cause the surface ol Oak Flat to collapse and result In a 1.8-mlle wide crater, which is the approximate distance from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial, that will be over a thousand feet deep. The process will permanently destroy more than one dozen sacred springs, burial sites. and related cultural properties."

Proponents of the mine claim job creation as the primary reason to move forward with the project. The reality Is that Rio Tinto has a long history of abusive labor practices. From Canada to California to South Africa, the company has a history of attacking unions and slashing wages. Rio Tinto has often responded to worker complaints with lockouts and layoffs. While Rio Tinto and BHP may make empty promises to support labor at the Resolution Copper mine, this mine will be fully automated and will not create good jobs for Arizonians. Resolution Copper will utilize robotized drilling and automated haul trucks that can all be controlled from an operations center outside ol Arizona."

Our union Is dedicated to advancing the social, economic, and educational welfare of our membership in Arizona and advocating for mining projects that support working families in the Slate. However, it Is clear that this project will only benefit a small group of foreign corporations that have repeatedly proven that they have no respect for unions, working families or mining communities. Therefore, on behalf of the 8,400 members of Teamsters Local Union 104, many of whom are members of Arizona's tribal nations, we stand In solidarity with our tribal brothers and sisters and urge key members of Congress. including the Honorable Senator Joe Manchin, Chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, to work with Congressional leadership to move the Save Oak Flat Act towards enactment and permanently protect this sacred area.

By Kathy Helms - Multicultural Alliance for a Safe Environment, July 10, 2021

CHURCHROCK – Larry King, president of Churchrock Chapter and a former uranium worker, doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in the melting Arctic of receiving federal benefits afforded sick Navajos who worked in the uranium industry before 1971. King isn’t the only one.

Linda Evers of Milan, co-founder of the Post-’71 Uranium Workers Committee, and the group’s members also can forget about help with their medical bills unless Congress changes qualifications for the 1990 program.

This weekend, the first day dawned in the countdown to July 10, 2022, when, according to statute, the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act Trust Fund “terminates,” along with the authority of the U.S. Attorney General to administer the law, according to the Department of Justice.

When the sun sets on this program, former uranium workers and downwinders will be unable to apply for benefits.

The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, “RECA,” provides compassionate payments to workers for certain cancers and diseases resulting from exposure to radiation during the build-up to the Cold War. It also compensates individuals who became ill following exposure to radioactive fallout from nuclear testing in Nevada.