EU trade unions call for heat limit for workers

PARIS • Trade unions called yesterday for the European Commission to impose maximum temperature limits for outdoor workers, after three people died while on shift in Madrid during last week's withering heatwave.

While a handful of member states have legislation limiting working hours in excessive heat, the thresholds vary and many nations have no nationwide heat limits.

According to research by the polling agency Eurofound, 23 per cent of all workers across the European Union were being exposed to high temperatures a quarter of the time.

That figure rises to 36 per cent in agriculture and industry and to 38 per cent for construction workers.

Previous research has linked high temperatures to a number of chronic conditions and an elevated risk of workplace injury.

"Workers are on the front line of the climate crisis every day and they need protections to match the ever-increasing danger from extreme temperatures," said Mr Claes-Mikael Stahl, deputy secretary-general of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC).

The ETUC said that most EU nations have no maximum temperature legislation for workplaces, although Belgium, Hungary and Latvia all have some curbs on activity.

In France, where there are currently no working temperature limits, 12 workers died because of heat exposure in 2020 alone, the union said.

Spain, where three workers died in extreme heat last week, does have temperature limits in place, but only for certain types of jobs. A 60-year-old street cleaner on a one-month contract died in Madrid last Saturday, after he collapsed in the street from heatstroke while working the previous day.

At the time, temperatures in Madrid neared 40 deg C. A 56-year-old warehouse worker in a Madrid suburb also died on Saturday after suffering heatstroke while on the job.

Security forces on Thursday announced the death of a worker due to heat in Paracuellos de Jarama, on the outskirts of the capital.

Last week, the city reached a deal with unions to restrict manual street cleaning work to below 39 deg C. With global average temperatures more than 1.1 deg C warmer than the pre-industrial era, Europe is being hit with more and more record-breaking hot spells.

Global heating will continue to make deadly heatwaves more frequent and intense with ever higher levels of atmospheric carbon pollution, scientists say.

The United Nations' climate science panel this year warned that tens of millions more people would be subjected to extreme heat days under 2 deg C of warming; countries' climate plans have Earth on course to warm by 2.7 deg C.

Meanwhile, air-conditioned shops in France will be ordered to keep their doors closed or risk being fined, a minister said on Sunday, announcing an upcoming rule to combat energy wastage.

Leaving the doors open when the air-conditioning is on leads to "20 per cent more consumption and... it's absurd", French Minister of Ecological Transition Agnes Pannier-Runacher told RMC radio.

The minister said there were also plans to restrict the use of illuminated signs.

Some cities in France - which, like other parts of Europe, have been gripped by a heatwave recently - passed municipal by-laws this month, imposing fines for offending air-conditioned shops. The government now plans to extend this to the whole country, with a fine of up to €750 (S$1,060) - but will emphasise the education of shopkeepers in the first instance.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE