Report: With Unions, Workers Experience Less Heat Stress

Report: With Unions, Workers Experience Less Heat Stress

Workers suffering from heat and other environmental stresses are best able to address the effects of climate change when they do so collectively, such as through their unions—especially when they can bargain collectively, according to Laurie Parsons of Royal Holloway, University of London. 

“People are experts on their experience with heat,” said Parsons. “A key neglected area is to adapt to the challenge by acknowledging workers are their own experts.”

Parsons, a Solidarity Center webinar panelist at a United Nations Climate Week event, discussed his new report, “Heat Stress in the Cambodian Workiplace,” which offered innovative research in determining the extent of heat on Cambodian workers.

 

Studying garment workers, street vendors and informal economy workers, the report concluded that unionized workers are better able to mitigate heat stress at work than workers without a union. 

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL REPORT

Rising temperatures are significantly affecting workers. More than 70 percent of workers worldwide are at risk from severe heat. While outdoor workers—such as those growing food or building communities—are among those most affected, workers suffer from heat exposure in factories, warehouses and during daily commutes.

The study finds that 55.5 percent of those surveyed report experienced at least one environmental impact in their workplaces in the past 12 months, with air pollution the most common (30.5 percent), followed by extreme heat (25.5 percent) and flooding (9 percent).

The report shows that unionized workers experience half as much heat stress as nonunionized workers, and found that collective bargaining is the most effective form of collectively protecting workers from heat stress.

Workers whose unions bargained over heat experience 74 percent fewer minutes at dangerously high core body temperatures.

As a result, Parsons demonstrates that detailed attention to workers’ bodies to monitor heat “doesn’t cost a lot of money.”

But up to now, heat stress has not been addressed primarily because workers in Cambodia and elsewhere often find it difficult to form a union.

Overcoming Challenges to Joining a Union

“Workers face real obstruction,” said Somalay So, Solidarity Center senior program officer for equality, inclusion and diversity in Cambodia. So shared with panelists the ways in which employers deter workers from forming unions, the difficulties in obtaining union status to negotiate and, when workers win a union, the challenges they face when attempting to negotiate their first contract.

Yet, “despite all these challenges, workers try to achieve smaller agreements,” So said.

She described five innovative heat stress agreements that unions achieved in which a factory agreed to turn on its cooling systems and fans if the factory temperature rose above more than 35 degrees celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit), and assigned mechanics to investigate, suggest and implement other measures if this is ineffective. To ensure companies do not argue that it is not too hot for employees to work, unions have negotiated a clause in which the factory installs a thermometer. 

Union leaders also convince employers to protect workers by pointing out that it benefits the bottom line: “It is good for their reputation,” So said, adding that heat not only causes heart and lung problems and lower incomes for workers, it slows workers and their productivity.

Climate Change and Work

Workers experiencing forced migration or who work at informal economy jobs such as food vendors and waste pickers are significantly affected by heat stress because they have little or no formal protection under the law, said Nash Tysmans, organizer for Asia at StreetNet International.

“Some 61 percent of the global workforce are informal workers, yet over half of workers are the most underrepresented” by collective bargaining agreements, she said on the panel. The report found that informal economy workers are in unions experience less exposure to extreme heat.

Women workers are especially vulnerable. In Cambodia, where 85 percent of garment workers are women, heat stress can lead to violence, So said. Heat stress leads to workplace violence and harassment, with employers often responding to falling productivity leading to violence and harassment rather than addressing heat stress issues.

“When their income drops because of climate change, it translates into domestic violence and trafficking,” she said. Workers experiencing violence may leave their area or country to make a living, and can become targets of unscrupulous labor brokers. “Violence and harassment happens more with heat stress. When there is heat stress, women and children are vulnerable even at home.”

Parsons, a professor at Royal Holloway, University of London, and expert on the social, political and economic aspects of climate change, previously researched a 2022 report for the Solidarity Center in Cambodia.

“When people can exercise their rights as workers without repression, not only can they improve their own working conditions, but they can raise standards across workplaces, industries, and across society more broadly,” said moderator Sonia Mistry, Solidarity Center climate and labor justice director.

Said So: “A strong union is when you are able to organize,” so “unions can be at the negotiating table to resolve issues of workers.

‘The Weight of the Heat’: Climate Change Further Burdens Bangladesh Tea Workers

‘The Weight of the Heat’: Climate Change Further Burdens Bangladesh Tea Workers

At the end of a day picking tea leaves under the July sun, women walk from the hilly fields down an embankment and into a muddy stream, fully clothed, to bathe before they return to their company-provided tin homes where they prepare dinner for their families.

The tea estate workers in Sreemangal, Bangladesh, say their work is much harsher now due to increased heat and more torrential rains. The changing climate also means that picking the daily quota of tea leaves, always difficult, is sometimes impossible. And when they cannot meet their quota, they are paid even less than their already meager wages.

Sreemoti Bauri_Hasan, a Bangladesh tea worker and union leader, Solidarity Center

Sreemati Bauri, a Bangladesh tea worker and union leader. Credit: Solidarity Center / Hasan Zobayer

“It often happens that in a heat wave, it’s a hardship to meet the daily quota [up to 25 kilos, 55 pounds] of tea leaves, and so they can’t make the daily wage of 170 taka ($1.55),” says Sreemati Bauri, a tea estate field supervisor and union leader.

“It’s already difficult to live with this little amount of money. If a worker can’t make their daily target, it’s difficult to survive. Due to the heat, it has become too hot for them to get their wage,” she said, speaking through an interpreter. Bauri, an executive member of the Jurivally Executive Committee, part of the Bangladesh Cha Sramik Union, supervises 300 women who walk long distances across tea fields each morning before they start picking leaves.

“The heat is more excessive than before,” says Sumon Kumar Tant, a field supervisor and union member. “They have to work under scorching sun. It’s as if they have to carry two times the burden—one the burden of tea leaves on their back, and the other, the weight of the heat.”

Better Working Conditions at Unionized Tea Estates
Bangladesh tea workers walk across fields on their way to pick tea leaves, Solidarity Center

Bangladesh tea workers walk long distances across fields on their way to pick tea leaves. Credit: Solidarity Center / Gayatree Arun

“At higher temperatures and prolonged periods of exposure, heat stress can lead to exhaustion, it can lead to permanent disability, it can even lead to death,” says Sophy Fisher, discussing the findings of an International Labor Organization (ILO) report on the impact of heat stress on workers. And women are disproportionately affected by the impacts of rising heat due to the type of work they perform and physical issues such as pregnancy, according to a new study.

Climate change-related hardships add to tea workers’ already precarious working conditions. An estimated 13 million people in 48 countries work on tea plantations around the world, mostly women who are paid low wages and have few or no health and safety protections, including safeguards to prevent and address sexual harassment and other forms of violence. Tea plantation workers often are forced to rely on their employers for food, housing and education, adding to their vulnerability.

“Tea workers give a lot of sweat for their work,” says Bauri.

Workers in the Bangladesh Cha Sramik Union, a Solidarity Center partner, have achieved workplace improvements not offered at nonunion plantations, with employers required to provide daily hour-long lunch breaks and a medical facility. Tant cites the rapid benefit payment by a company to the family of a tea picker killed on the job by a falling tree branch as an example of how the union’s intervention ensured proper compensation.

Still, more progress must be made, he said, citing the need for pregnant workers to get more time off than the four months’ paid maternity leave granted under the country’s labor law.

Little Accountability Global Tea Supply Chain
Bangladesh tea worker, Solidarity Center

Bangladesh tea worker, Sanchari. Credit: Solidarity Center / Hasan Zobayer

Rooted in colonial era exploitation, tea plantations are rife with worker rights abuses. Accountability in the global tea supply chain is particularly lacking, with a recent report finding few corporations willing to provide the information necessary to determine how workers are treated and little due diligence across the supply chain.

A lack of supply chain transparency means companies are not being held to account for violations, says Kate Jelly, author of the Business and Human Rights Research Center (BHRRC) report, Boiling Point: Strengthening Corporate Accountability in the Tea Industry. “Many companies maintaining opaque supply chains are able to distance themselves from human rights abuses,” she told Reuters.

Based on research into news stories from 2022, the report found human rights abuses in Bangladesh and four other countries involving low or unpaid wages, lack of safety and health protections, and employer intimidation of workers seeking to improve their workplaces through unions.

Involving workers in the due diligence process is essential for supply chain transparency, according to Natalie Swan, a BHRRC labor rights program manager. “That means not relying on certification, not relying on a human rights policy or a supplier code of conduct.”

Solidarity Center believes workers must be at the center of workplace solutions, including those involving climate justice, in which the needs of workers and their communities are involved in achieving a fair or just transition to a more equitable and sustainable economy to mitigate the impacts of climate change and enable adaptation for impacted communities.