“If this crisis is to be resolved and its already severe impacts minimised, there must be a transition planned with and for workers. Trade unionists cannot afford to sit this one out.”
By Fraser McGuire
Workers are already paying the price for the climate crisis, with this Summer’s run of heatwaves making that fact undeniable, while it should already have been obvious. Trade unions must have climate as a priority at both a national level, and for workplace and employer based industrial campaigns.
Britain has no legal maximum working temperature, and the workplaces where employers have implemented a maximum temperature are those where workers have collectively organised to force their hand. In Unite Hospitality, we saw many kitchen staff sweltering in temperatures exceeding 40°C, and bus drivers suffered in cabs without air conditioning that reached similar temperatures.
As well as skyrocketing temperatures, other impacts of climate change are hitting workers, such as increased flooding which disrupts commutes and closes workplaces, often with no pay guarantees for the workers who can’t get in, especially those employed on more insecure contracts. At TUC Congress this week, one motion from the RMT and TSSA on rail safety and extreme weather highlighted that the climate crisis is exacerbating existing safety and infrastructure issues caused by underfunding.
There is a substantial link between workers in precarious and non-union organised workplaces and sectors, and those who have the least protection from the increased impacts of climate breakdown. Organising around these issues therefore must be a key priority for reps and union activists at a workplace level, as legislative changes alone will not protect us.
At a national level, unions must continue to put pressure on the Government and Health and Safety Executive for maximum workplace temperatures, with the TUC already having called for an upper limit on workplace temperatures, with employers being forced to act once temperatures pass 24°C, and with staff being able to leave the workplace above 30°C (or 27°C for those engaged in physically demanding work).
These campaigns cannot simply be national, they must empower reps to organise around temperature in the workplace, such as the drafting of collective grievances, bringing demands into health and safety negotiations (in recognised workplaces). This point can be exemplified by the recent win of bus drivers organised with Unite at Arriva North London, who have taken industrial action over high temperatures since August, until recently forcing the employer to install air conditioning to their buses by May next year, and confirm that drivers no longer have to keep working if air conditioning breaks.
Alongside building industrial demands over climate issues, trade unionists must work to engage with local climate groups where possible, many of which are made up of residents not engaged
in the wider labour movement. Building these connections locally can help create new stronger alliances between our union branches, structures, and trades councils with groups who have the same fundamental aims as us – protecting communities and workers from the greatest global threat we have ever faced.
One such practical example would be the screenings of ‘People’s Emergency Briefings’ which have taken place across the country in recent months and have been attended by tens of thousands of people. When I went to my local screenings in Derbyshire, I found very few active trade unionists there, despite them being some of the best attended political events I have seen in years.
These are clear spaces that union reps and activists should be participating in, to build those links with climate organisers, make our case for them supporting collective action and organising campaigns, and help ensure that climate demands are rooted in understanding of class and the labour movement. Climate groups are often – with exceptions – strongest on the science and the moral case, but lacking in the ability to root themselves in the areas of real leverage – workplaces and industry.
The climate crisis is a worker and union issue. Workers will be hit first, with the low-paid and insecure workers without an organised workplace being most vulnerable. If this crisis is to be resolved and its already severe impacts minimised, there must be a transition planned with and for workers. Trade unionists cannot afford to sit this one out.
- Fraser McGuire is the President of Derby Trades Union Council, a member of TUC Midlands Regional Committee, and an organiser for Arise: A Festival Of Left Ideas. You can follow him on Twitter/X and Instagram.
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