This is Eve. This isn’t the first time that outdoor temperature played a major role in how exposed workers were treated. In the United States, cotton slaves were treated as property and could be sold, traded, and even used as collateral for loans. In contrast, Haitian slaves used in the much tougher sugar industry were treated as disposable; they were worked to death and replaced by new slaves.
As this article suggests, it is not hard to imagine outdoor workers again being treated more and more as disposable, even if employers and governments go to great lengths to hide that fact.
Article by Kurt Cobb, a freelance writer and communications consultant who frequently writes about energy and the environment. Oil prices
- Global warming is putting the working conditions of outdoor workers, including Disney employees and farm workers, at risk.
- Heatstroke and fatal accidents are on the rise, posing serious risks to worker health and productivity.
- The economic costs of extreme heat include increased costs for employers, reduced production, and higher food prices.
In an era of climate change, who will pay the cost of humanity’s heat exposure?
One of the inevitable consequences of climate change is that temperatures will rise most everywhere. While this may be welcome (at least for a while) in cooler regions, most people live in temperate or tropical climates. When the Walt Disney Company built Disney World in central Florida (it opened in 1971), the place was warm and sunny for three seasons a year, although the summers were a bit hot.
Central Florida doesn’t just get a little hot in the summer. The situation has become untenable for many Disney World employees. They have to work outdoors, and some of them wear heavy costumes while playing roles such as Mickey Mouse, Goofy, and Disney princesses. With local heat indexes exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit, those working outdoors have complained of being overwhelmed by the heat and lack of shade, water, and adequate breaks. Recently, the air conditioner in the actors’ dressing room broke, causing two people to faint, but the air conditioner has since been repaired.
Of course, Disney employees aren’t the only ones who suffer from overheating: Farm workers aren’t there to entertain, they’re doing hard work in the midday sun. Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) report Agricultural workers suffer heat-related deaths at 20 times the rate of other workers. EDF calculates that 2 million U.S. agricultural workers are currently exposed to dangerous heat 21 days a year. But climate change is a moving target: if global greenhouse gas emissions peak by mid-century, that number of dangerously hot days will increase by 18 more days.
So the question arises: Who pays the costs of an overheated work environment? In Florida, it appears those costs will be passed on to workers in the form of heatstroke and possibly heatstroke-related deaths. The Florida Legislature has passed a bill that would prohibit local governments from promulgating heat-related work regulations to protect workers.For many workers, protection from the heat can only be obtained through union contracts.
by Orlando Weekly Article linked above“In the United States, only three states – California, Oregon, and Washington – require heat breaks for outdoor workers, and only Minnesota and Oregon currently have heat safety regulations for indoor workers.” However, due to climate change, human heat sensitivity is now a major problem.
The problem occurs in India, which is mostly tropical. Working outdoors becomes more and more unbearable Consulting firm McKinsey & Company estimates that as temperatures rise, 2020 Report “India could be one of the first places in the world to experience heatwaves that exceed the survival limits of healthy humans resting in the shade, and this could happen as soon as the next decade.” Think about that for a moment: Indians who work outdoors cannot avoid dangerous overheating while “resting in the shade.”
The costs are borne by anyone who works outdoors: construction workers, farm workers, outdoor athletes, employees of outdoor recreation and sports facilities, etc. Ultimately, we all pay the price: in higher costs to attract workers to work in more dangerous outdoor conditions, in reduced productivity of those workers, and in higher food costs as crop yields decline due to heat stress (and increasingly severe flooding as climate change accompanies it).
Pretending, as the Florida Legislature has done, that excessive heat isn’t a problem facing employers only makes things worse. Of course, our global community can do something about the actual causes of rising temperatures, but so far we’ve only dealt with the symptoms — or, in this case, simply ignored them.
