Turning up the heat on workplace safety

3°C. That’s what the world is on track to heat up by, above pre-industrial levels, by the end of this century.

If that happens, Australia will experience a 350% increase in extreme heat days, with heat deaths predicted to spike up to 444% across the country.

It’s a grim reality for us all – and workers are no exception. Unions are concerned that most workplaces are already becoming more dangerous, leaving workers exposed to ever increasing climate hazards.

Without new work health and safety laws to better protect workers, climate change poses an extreme safety risk for every workplace.

On the frontline of the climate crisis

Climate change is most felt by people who cannot escape its impacts, including workers whose livelihood puts them at risk from climate extremes.

Workers are frequently exposed to the consequences of climate change, often for long periods and at high intensities. Strong evidence demonstrates that climate change and environmental degradation lead to a deterioration of working conditions and an increased risk of occupational injury, disease and death.

Workers, especially those outdoors (such as in agriculture, construction and transport) are at higher risk of everything, from heat exhaustion to cardiac arrest. But it’s not just those who work in the open air who are vulnerable: workplaces that already generate heat – including bakeries, foundries and commercial laundries – also face greater risks.

Extreme heat is not the only consequence though. Worsening natural disasters, declining air quality, and an increase in vector-borne diseases are all hazards made significantly worse by climate change:

Natural disasters

Worsening natural disasters add to the strain on healthcare and emergency service workers, who are required to work longer hours in more hazardous conditions, risking exposure to contaminants from fires and floods.

Air quality

Bushfires and heatwaves increase concentrations of ground level ozone, nitrogen dioxide, and particulate pollution, which can cause cancer, stroke, and respiratory illness in indoor and outdoor workers.

Vector-borne illnesses

Warming temperatures are also increasing the spread of disease-carrying insects, exposing farmers, foresters, gardeners, and construction workers to illnesses like Japanese encephalitis.

The climate gap in our WHS laws

Globally, Work Health & Safety (WHS) policies and practices are increasingly failing to protect workers from a variety of climate-related hazards.

Unacceptably, this includes Australia: our current work health and safety regime does not enforce mandatory thresholds for safe temperature or indoor and outdoor air quality, heat stress protocols, co-developed emergency plans, or any other binding climate adaptation measures.

We urgently need change, to protect workers from the climate impacts we’re already witnessing, let alone what we’ll see in the 2030s and 2040s.

Last week, union leaders and workers, including nurses, firefighters, and teachers, travelled to Canberra to launch a new report – Work Health and Safety in the Era of Climate Crisis – laying out the extreme safety risks to workers and reforms needed in the face of rising temperatures.

We’re calling on Safe Work Australia to urgently develop binding regulations to protect workers from these hazards which are made significantly worse by climate change.

The report is part of a broader campaign by Renew Australia for All, an alliance of 80 unions, clean industry, climate and community groups calling for more Commonwealth investment in climate resilience measures across healthcare, local government, housing, agriculture and our emergency responses.

Work health and safety is core union business. Which means climate action is core union business.

Without urgent action, workers’ fundamental right to safe and healthy work will be increasingly undermined by the climate crisis.