Maggie Fricker, Unison health and safety rep, Southampton General Hospital (personal capacity)
Like the rest of Europe, we’ve seen record temperatures in the UK because of climate change. It has been blistering, with health warnings across the country. But the danger is not just sitting on the beach, billions of us have to work through these heat waves. It’s reported that bus drivers are fainting in unbearable heat on London buses and outside workers are being advised not to work in the middle of the day. For many of us, it’s no better working inside. With crippling cuts across the public sector our infrastructure is crumbling with non-existent or inadequate air conditioning for most of us.
Workplace temperatures are increasingly becoming a health and safety issue. In the hospital I work in we are often treating patients in temperatures well above 30°C in the summer months. Not only does this have a detrimental effect on patients but it is a serious threat to staff who can suffer from loss of concentration, brain fog, tiredness and other symptoms of heat stress. There is no legal maximum temperature, but the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992, state that the temperature inside workplace buildings must be “reasonable”. The approved code of practice is that “all reasonable steps should be taken to achieve a comfortable temperature” and “effective and suitable provision shall be made to ensure that every enclosed workplace is ventilated by a sufficient quantity of fresh or purified air”. Unfortunately, this legal obligation is being ignored by many employers who force us to work harder and harder with less and less resources.
The TUC (Trades Union Congress) has for years called for a maximum working temperature of 30°C, or 27°C for strenuous work. Trade unions should be demanding the Labour government include this issue in their, much talked about but little happening, legal changes to workers’ rights. But reps also need to act now to fight for improvement in working conditions, access to drinking water, extra breaks, access to good staffroom facilities and to make alternative arrangements to work patterns in hot weather. We have the legal right to stop work if conditions are not safe, as teachers did during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The bosses have no interest in the detrimental effects of climate change on working conditions, as long as their profits keep rolling in. We call for the nationalisation under workers’ control and management of the energy and the transport industry. This would allow us to plan the best use of resources for the benefit of workers and users alike rather than penny pitching for us and maximising profits for them.
But this rotten system of capitalism is utterly incapable of solving any of these problems for good – with its continuation we have to fight over and over again for better working conditions. In a socialist society we could harness the vast wealth in the world to the benefit of the planet and its populations. So, workers suffering exhaustion, dehydration and heat stress to benefit a handful of greedy bosses will be become a thing of the past.
