Extreme heat is not the only workplace safety hazard wrought by climate change. Air pollution has reached dangerous levels in many places. The extreme temperatures in Arizona this summer exacerbated ground-level ozone, prompting high pollution advisories; scientists predict the ozone threat will increase with global warming. Meanwhile, widespread pollution from the Canadian wildfires was inescapable for millions of outdoor workers in the U.S. (The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in July that one-third of all workers had “regular outdoor exposure” in 2022.) While the New York City government was sending panicked warnings to stay indoors, many workers had no choice but to be outside—and many employers did nothing to provide for their safety. So UPS workers, represented by the Teamsters, and gig workers for companies like Uber Eats and DoorDash, who organized with a workers’ group called Los Deliveristas Unidos, cooperated to deliver N95 masks to their fellow delivery drivers.
Delivery workers are the canaries in the coal mine on the intertwined issues of extreme heat and air pollution. In the coming years, many other sectors—construction, fishing, roofing, farming, landscaping, professional sports, and so on—will be affected by workers’ struggle to stay safe in extremely hot weather and toxic air. Global warming’s health consequences for workers are already visible and dire, and demand solidarity and a reckoning.
Climate and labor are often spoken of as separate issues, at times in conflict, as unions sometimes oppose environmental policies that may threaten workers’ jobs, while environmental groups don’t always put workers at the center of proposed schemes for a carbon-free economy. But now, during the hottest summer on record, the political implications should be clear for the climate movement and labor movement alike: The fight to ease global warming is inseparable from the struggles for a safer workplace. Mandatory water breaks and air-conditioning must be seen as climate issues, and our ongoing addiction to fossil fuels understood as a brutal assault on labor.