health and safety

By Kristoffer Tigue - Inside Climate News , October 31, 2023

American farmworkers are increasingly at risk of heat-related illness and death as climate change drives temperatures around the world to record highs. That’s pushing more and more workers to harvest crops at night to avoid extreme heat, according to recent reports, which is creating a host of new risks that experts say need to be more thoroughly studied.

More than 2 million U.S. farmworkers, who typically toil outdoors under a hot summer sun, are exceptionally at risk of succumbing to heat-related illness, the Environmental Defense Fund warned in a July report, with heat-related mortalities 20 times higher for crop workers than in other private industries, as well as employees in local and state government. About three weeks of the summer harvest season are now expected to be too hot to safely work outdoors, the report’s authors added, and that number will only increase as global warming continues.

Government data and other studies have found that an average of 43 farmworkers die every year from heat-related illness. But top officials with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which oversees U.S. working conditions, say that number is significantly undercounted, largely because heat doesn’t get factored into deaths from cardiac arrests and respiratory failures. One advocacy group estimated that heat exposure could be responsible for as many as 2,000 worker fatalities in the U.S. each year.

In fact, this summer was the hottest on record for the entire northern hemisphere, federal scientists announced in September, in large part because of climate change. Parts of the Midwest and large regions of Europe are also experiencing record hot Octobers.

As the daytime heat has gone up, a growing number of agriculture workers—many of whom are Latino and undocumented—now work while it’s still dark out. But that could be trading one risk for a set of others, labor and safety advocates are warning.

By Isabella Escalona and Amy Stager - Workday Magazine, October 31, 2023

Minnesota unions have been planning for this moment for a decade.

Over the years they’ve meticulously coordinated their contracts to expire at the same time in order to maximize unity and bargaining power. Now, as these expiration dates are within sight, union organizers and rank-and-file members are beginning to prepare.

SEIU Local 26 has a contract expiring for 4,000 commercial janitorial workers on December 31. Their contracts for another 1,000 airport workers and 500 retail janitorial workers close on January 31, 2024. And the contract is up for 2,500 security workers on February 29, 2024.

In the world of public schools, the contracts for the St. Paul Federation of Educators (SPFE) Local 28, the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) Local 59, and SEIU Local 284 (which represents support staff), already expired on June 30, but those contracts remain in effect until an agreement is put in place due to the Public Employment Labor Relations Act (PELRA).

The contract for the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 1005 also expired over the summer, on July 31, but has been extended until a new contract is ratified. (The ATU is currently negotiating with the Metropolitan Council.)

Meanwhile, the Metro Transit bus and rail operators with the ATU and maintenance workers voted to authorize a strike in September. One of the ATU’s main demands is a cost of living adjustment plus 1%. 

While the unions are organizing and bargaining separately, the shared expiration timeline was no accident. After decades of communication and coalition, many Minnesota unions have been eyeing opportunities like this in order to pool resources, strategize around bigger demands, and build a synergy they hope will lead to major gains.

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 Katie Myers and Siri Chilukuri - Grist, October 27, 2023

This story is part of Record High, a Grist series examining extreme heat and its impact on how — and where — we live.

On any given summer day, most of the nation’s farmworkers, paid according to their productivity, grind through searing heat to harvest as much as possible before day’s end. Taking a break to cool down, or even a moment to chug water, isn’t an option. The law doesn’t require it, so few farms offer it.

The problem is most acute in the Deep South, where the weather and politics can be equally brutal toward the men and women who pick this country’s food. Yet things are improving as organizers like Leonel Perez take to the fields to tell farmworkers, and those who employ them, about the risks of heat exposure and the need to take breaks, drink water, and recognize the signs of heat exhaustion. 

“The workers themselves are never in a position where they’ve been expecting something like this,” Perez told Grist through a translator. “If we say, ‘Hey, you have the right to go and take a break when you need one,’ it’s not something that they’re accustomed to hearing or that they necessarily trust right away.”

Perez is an educator with the Fair Food Program, a worker-led human rights campaign that’s been steadily expanding from its base in southern Florida to farms in 10 states, Mexico, Chile, and South Africa. Although founded in 2011 to protect workers from forced labor, sexual harassment, and other abuses, it has of late taken on the urgent role of helping them cope with ever-hotter conditions. 

It is increasingly vital work. Among those who labor outdoors, agricultural workers enjoy the least protection. Despite this summer’s record heat, the United States still lacks a federal standard governing workplace exposure to extreme temperatures. According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, the agency has opened more than 4,500 heat-related inspections since March 2022, but it does not have data on worker deaths from heat-related illnesses. 

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).