This week the first journal article based on my research with the United Workers Union, conducted with James Goodman and Freya Newman, was published in Economic and Labour Relations Review.
The United Workers Union is one of the largest blue-collar unions in Australia, with approximately 150,000 members across 45 industries. Many UWU members work in heat-exposed environments, in both indoor and outdoor settings. We interviewed and surveyed workers involved in cleaning, agriculture, utilities, construction, food and hospitality, security and prisons, manufacturing, and transport and warehousing.
The project explored these workers’ experiences of high heat at work, what actions they had taken to manage it and their views on whether climate change was impacting working conditions more generally. We report on the project findings, highlight the complexities in planning for current and future impacts of global warming, and consider the policy implications and potential future research.
Workers spoke about problems accessing cooling and PPE, having enough time to hydrate and rest in hot weather, and heat stress resulting from productivity pressures and not enough workers being on the job in hot weather.
Some workers talked about high heat conditions producing a vicious cycle; as workers are forced to mitigate the adverse impacts of the heat, it becomes increasingly difficult for them to ‘keep up’, particularly if there is no commensurate reduction in their workload pressures. As one said:
Essentially, it’s quite terrible. You…drink way more water, so you’re forced off the line, which puts pressure on you to work harder, which makes you sweat more and then tires you out. Essentially, it’s just an all-round lose situation because you’re hot, overheated, stressed and incredibly sweaty (manufacturing worker, New South Wales).
Due to the cumulative effects of heat, many workers suffer towards the end of their shifts, travelling to and from work, at home after they get home from work or in the latter half of a hot or high-intensity week. Some workers described in interviews how the heat ‘catches up’ with them:
I have come in from some on-calls where I’ve done over 102 hours in a week, dry retching and throwing up, just from all the heat exhaustion and just doing 16-hour shifts, 7 days a week…you even feel it after those hot days have gone (utility worker, South Australia).
One worker recalled a particularly difficult week, working outdoors on roads around 48°C temperature. The bitumen was sticking to his boots, and he said it ‘took days to recover’. Another said:
If you go home after a long day, you just kind of want to stare at the ground for ten, fifteen minutes, until you, I don’t know, become alive again (manufacturing worker, New South Wales).
Working in high heat also had dissociative impacts for some workers, who described feeling ‘out of it’, ‘like a zombie’, on ‘remote control’ or being ‘zonked the hell out’. One worker compared it to having ‘a really severe hangover’, and another said high heat problems led to ‘mental health deterioration over time’.
Nearly 20% of survey respondents said they were aware of serious incidents relating to heat, involving either them or their co-workers. These included workers and those in their care suffering seizures, heat exhaustion, stroke, extreme stress and other forms of illness. A few workers reported fatalities of co-workers and patients.
Employers are required to provide adequate resourcing for at-risk workers, such as high-standard PPE, adequate hydration while at work, regular breaks, acclimatisation protocols and sufficient personnel to ensure workers can be relieved for recovery time. Yet our research suggests these requirements are often not being met.
It is also clear that the Commonwealth and state and territory governments need to urgently review more broadly the management of current and likely future impacts of high heat and climate change for workers. This will necessitate sector-by-sector planning – involving labour, industry and government – to work through particular climate impacts across the diversity of the Australian workforce, across the continent’s varied geography, and with regard to contingent and vulnerable workers.
