[ Labor reporters are increasingly focusing on how extreme heat
kills workers — and what should be done about it. They could focus
on industry opposition to creating federal heat regulations, whether
from agricultural employers or warehouse companies.]
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HOW RISING TEMPERATURES ARE BECOMING A LABOR STORY  
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Steven Greenhouse
January 19, 2023
Nieman Reports
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_ Labor reporters are increasingly focusing on how extreme heat kills
workers — and what should be done about it. They could focus on
industry opposition to creating federal heat regulations, whether from
agricultural employers or warehouse companies. _

Pedro Lucas, center, nephew of farm worker Sebastian Francisco Perez
who died while working in an extreme heat wave, talks about his
uncle's death, Thursday, July 1, 2021, near St. Paul, Oregon , Nathan
Howard/AP Photo // Nieman Reports

 

When an extraordinary heat wave hit
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Pacific Northwest in June 2021, with temperatures soaring to a record
116 degrees in Portland, it sent a hard-to-ignore message that extreme
heat has become an increasing danger — not just in Arizona and
Texas, but in northern states, too.

As a result of that heat wave, more than 100 people died in Oregon,
and one issue that was repeatedly discussed afterwards was the way
extreme heat endangers older Americans and those who live at home
without air conditioning. But there was another serious danger that
wasn’t discussed nearly enough: High heat can be a big problem for
the nation’s workers, not just farmworkers and construction workers,
but delivery workers, utility workers, landscaping workers, and
warehouse workers.

A study done last summer by Public Citizen, a research and advocacy
group founded by Ralph Nader, estimated that extreme heat contributes
[[link removed]] to between 600 and
2,000 worker fatalities each year in the United States. Those numbers
are likely to grow worse because climate experts predict that the
number of days with unsafe heat conditions
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between now and 2050. As global warming worsens, the world will see
more intense droughts, longer heat waves, more severe storms, rising
sea levels, melting glaciers, and more difficult conditions for many
workers — especially for outdoor workers like agricultural workers,
delivery drivers, and construction workers.Intense heat can cause,
among other things, heat stroke, cardiac events, and kidney failure.
“This is a very serious and growing problem with more high heat days
this year and the highest temperatures on record in many states,”
says Ellen Widess, former chief of the California Division of
Occupational Safety and Health and senior advisor to the University of
California Merced’s Community and Labor Center. “We’re also
seeing extreme heat in parts of the country that have rarely or never
experienced high heat.”

Amid growing worries about heat, many occupational safety experts
criticize the federal government for not issuing an occupational heat
stress rule or standard that would protect workers from extreme heat,
perhaps by requiring shade, water, and rest breaks whenever
temperatures hit a certain level.

Many occupational safety experts also fault the media, saying news
organizations have done too few stories about this threat to workers
and done too little to educate the public about it. “The problem is
huge, and the media sometimes they just don’t get the breadth of it.
There’s a failure to see how it’s affecting many workers,” says
Juley Fulcher, a worker health and safety advocate at Public Citizen.
“The media is there the moment there is a heat wave. That’s when
they show up. The problem is the media isn’t there any other time to
cover this problem.”

Some safety experts say one reason the media — and the nation —
pay so little attention to the threat that high heat poses for workers
is that the hardest hit occupational group is farmworkers, a group
that society often overlooks, partly because it’s largely comprised
of low-paid immigrants.

Extreme heat often sneaks up on workers and can be deadly. A handful
of media organizations have taken a close look at the problem.

Sebastian Perez, 38, collapsed and died during the 2021 heat wave in
Oregon. An in-depth article in Rolling Stone described
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he was working alone in a field in the Willamette Valley, moving
30-pound irrigation pipes to help ensure that young trees survived the
heat wave. Temperatures rose to well over 100 degrees that afternoon,
and when Perez’s co-workers began a search for him after he didn’t
answer his phone, they found him slumped on the ground, barely
breathing. He died before the ambulance arrived.

With the mercury heading toward 88, firefighter Yaroslav “Yaro”
Katkov, a 28-year-old immigrant from Ukraine, was doing a standard
training exercise
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a 1.45-mile loop in a mountainous area halfway between Los Angeles
and San Diego, NPR reported. Even though Katkov was lagging badly
behind the others, the fire captain ordered the squad to repeat the
loop. Katkov soon collapsed and was airlifted to a hospital. He died
the next day from “heat illness,” according to NPR.

On a July day that hit 96 degrees, Karl Simmons, a 30-year-old
African-American Navy veteran, collapsed
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Worth to patch the turf of a soccer field. A passerby saw Simmons
sprawled on the ground, facedown, and alerted his co-workers. He was
rushed to a hospital but died from heat stroke. According to an
article [[link removed]] by Columbia
Journalism Investigations and the Texas Newsroom, “His body
temperature registered 107.1 degrees — high enough to shut down
internal organs such as the heart and kidneys.”

“One thing that is so important to get across is the craziness of
this — this is all preventable,” says Julia Shipley, a former
investigative reporting fellow at Columbia Journalism School who was
part of the team that did a year-long project about extreme heat and
workers that looked into Simmons’ and Katkov’s deaths. “These
workers arrive at their job in the morning. They’re healthy and
functioning people. They kiss their wife or husband good-bye. They
wave to their kids going off to school. … They’re human beings
like you and me, and they’re dead by the end of the day.It’s crazy
to take a human being who’s healthy, and through this process of …
rising core temperatures and bodily efforts and the lack of water and
the lack of shade and the lack of breaks and the lack of attention,
they suddenly die. It’s so insidious. When a worker is crushed by a
bulldozer, you can see that. This is much more surreptitious, yet all
the more urgent because of that.”

This increased discussion about heat’s effects on U.S. workers comes
at the same time a huge controversy
[[link removed]] erupted in Qatar
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migrant workers
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constructed the stadiums, roads, hotels, and apartment buildings for
the World Cup competition. The Guardian reported
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of migrant construction workers died annually from heat stress in
recent years in Qatar as they worked in heat as high as 113 degrees.
Indeed as temperatures rise across the globe, there are more reports
and studies about workers dying and suffering from heat in country
after country, including China
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and Spain
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Job safety experts emphasize that high temperatures can endanger not
just outdoor workers, but also indoor workers, such as bakery workers
and workers in commercial kitchens
[[link removed]]. Perhaps
the most publicized example came a little over a decade ago when The
Morning Call in Allentown did an exposé about an Amazon fulfillment
center
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Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley. “During summer heat waves, Amazon
arranged to have paramedics parked in ambulances outside, ready to
treat any workers who dehydrated or suffered other forms of heat
stress,” the paper reported. “Those who couldn’t quickly cool
off and return to work were sent home or taken out in stretchers and
wheelchairs and transported to area hospitals.” At one point, the
temperature-humidity index inside the warehouse reached 114 degrees.

 

Construction workers clean up the floor of a steel structure in
triple-digit heat Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2022, in downtown Los Angeles
 (Damian Dovarganes/AP photo//  Nieman Reports)
After that exposé, Amazon added
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air conditioning in its warehouses, but many Amazon workers still
complain of heat problems. This past August, workers at an Amazon air
freight warehouse in San Bernardino, California, walked off the job to
demand higher pay and better safety measures against the heat. The
Washington Post wrote
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local temperatures “often reached above 100 degrees this summer,
causing heat-related illness in particular for workers who are
outdoors loading and unloading planes.”

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 30 workers die in
the U.S. each year directly from the heat. But many experts say the
official numbers significantly understate the total and the overall
problem.

David Michaels, who was assistant secretary of labor for the
Occupational Safety and Health Administration under President Obama,
said heat fatalities are undercounted because the authorities count
deaths as caused by heat only when the victim has been taken to a
hospital and their body temperature is measured. “It can be very
difficult to attribute a death to heat,” says Michaels, an
epidemiologist now teaching at the George Washington University School
of Public Health. He notes that it’s easy to blame other causes,
such as heart attacks or respiratory conditions. “Extreme heat
causes the body to become so hot that it stops functioning,”
Michaels adds.

Public Citizen’s report said that “environmental heat is likely
responsible for 170,000 work-related injuries every year, and possibly
many more.” For instance, high heat can make workers dizzy or faint,
and that can cause workers who operate machines to make mistakes that
can seriously injure them or their coworkers.

Widess says the media could do far more to educate workers, employers,
and the public about extreme heat. “It would be good to cover the
scientific evidence to make it more of an acknowledged problem, not a
random thing — not a high heat day here and there, but a kind of
relentless or ongoing problem,” she says. “Better media coverage
could pressure employers to take the necessary steps to help workers.
Better media coverage could put more pressure on policymakers to adopt
rules or standards, to act in the void of federal inaction.”

California, Oregon, Washington, and Minnesota are among the only
states that have adopted heat standards requiring employers to take
specific steps in hot weather — such as giving periodic breaks to
cool off. (Colorado recently created
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specifically to protect farm workers.) Worker advocates like Widess
hope that other states will soon adopt such standards.

Public Citizen’s Fulcher says the media could play a valuable role
in reducing heat deaths and illnesses. “The media should really
start focusing stories on this in the spring or early in the
summer,” she says. “You want to do a lot of advance awareness
before, rather than after, raising awareness among the general
public.”

The occasional stories about workers dying from heat stress indicate
that employee and employer alike often paid scant attention to
heat’s potential dangers. A Los Angeles area postal worker, 63,
Peggy Frank, died
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temperatures in her mail truck climbed to 117 degrees. On a day when
the heat index hit 90, a 47-year-old laborer died on his third day
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the job, doing roofing work at a high school in Jefferson City,
Missouri. A day after he turned 24, Esteban Chavez Jr., a UPS
driver, passed out in his truck and died
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finishing the last delivery on his route in Pasadena, California. The
temperature was in the upper 90s. In an area where one wouldn’t
expect heat deaths — upstate New York — Tim Barber, 35, died on
the second day
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his construction job. He was working in 95-degree heat on a bridge
project over the Genesee River near Rochester. (A disproportionate
number of workers who die are new workers, not acclimated to working
in high heat.)

If workers and employers are educated to recognize the symptoms of
heat exhaustion — which precedes heat stroke — that could help
save workers’ lives. Symptoms of heat exhaustion include heavy
sweating, dizziness, rapid pulse, muscle cramps, fatigue, headaches,
and goose bumps. Heat stroke’s symptoms include an altered mental
state, vomiting, nausea, rapid breathing, and very rapid heart rate.

There are many worthwhile stories to be done about extreme heat. One
would explore why such a disproportionate number of workers who die
from heat are Black or brown, like Perez and Simmons. Another focus
could be why the federal government has never adopted a heat standard,
even though the National Institute for Occupational Safety and
Health first called for
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heat-stress rules in 1972. After previous administrations failed to
act to create a standard, the Biden administration announced in
September 2021 a plan
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draft workplace heat regulations, but the process, which involves
several rounds of soliciting public comment, could take five years.

Some occupational safety experts argue that the media should examine
what they say is insufficient enforcement to protect workers from
heat. Several say that federal OSHA and Cal/OSHA are badly
understaffed
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need more inspectors to investigate heat-induced deaths and illnesses.
Another problem: Even when OSHA levies fines against an employer for
failing to prevent a worker’s death, judges sometimes overturn those
fines, saying employers shouldn’t be punished when there aren’t
specific federal heat regulations stating what an employer’s
obligations are in such situations.

David Nickerson, a data journalist with the Bay Area News Group in
California who worked on the Columbia investigation team with Shipley,
has done extensive reporting on extreme heat. He suggests that
journalists do more accountability stories that examine whether
government safety officials have followed up on ensuring safety
improvements after a workers’ heat death and whether companies where
a worker died have taken the promised steps to prevent future heat
deaths.

Speaking about Hellas Construction
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the company that employed Simmons, Nickerson says, “It was
remarkable that what happened with Hellas is a worker died from heat,
and then OSHA inspected the company and there was an agreement to stop
this from happening again. But the company did not fully follow up.
When a worker named Pedro Martinez Jr. came in a year later, on his
third day at work again there was no shade and again there was limited
water, and that day another worker died.”

Another focus for reporters could be the extensive industry opposition
to creating federal heat regulations, whether from agricultural
employers or warehouse companies. For instance, the National Cotton
Council strongly opposes Biden’s plan to adopt a heat standard,
saying, “Agriculture is not an industry that can be successfully
regimented as some other industries have been.”

Michelle Tigchelaar, co-author of a major report on heat risks for
farmworkers [[link removed]],
says more coverage is needed about extreme heat’s threat to
farmworkers. Not only do they often work in searing temperatures
without any shade, she says, but “these workers have little agency
to set their own schedule or pace when it’s extremely hot because
they’re paid by the piece,” and that creates considerable pressure
to rush and work long hours. Moreover, Tigchelaar says, many
farmworkers are scared to speak up about dangers like high heat
because they’re on H-2A temporary visas and can be deported if their
employer fires them.

“Another problem,” according to Tigchelaar, “is the farm owners
who need to provide housing, and it’s often not equipped with air
conditioning or other ways people can cool off at night. That leaves
workers more vulnerable to high heat the next day.”

Safety experts say it would be helpful if the media did more stories
about model employers or programs that do a good job protecting
workers from heat. Some farms and construction companies begin their
workday at 4 a.m. or so and try to end work around noon, sparing
workers from toiling in the hottest afternoon hours.

Julia Shipley, the reporting fellow at Columbia Journalism School,
sees one thing as key to writing stories about heat’s dangers and
heat deaths: You have to take a deep dive and describe the whole
person, she says. Shipley and her team wrote about Cruz Urias-Beltran,
a 52-year-old immigrant from Mexico who collapsed and died while
working on a Nebraska cornfield on a 91-degree day in July. “His
core body temperature was 108 degrees — hot enough for the brain,
liver and kidneys to shut down,” they wrote. Shipley noted that
Urias-Beltran had traveled 1,300 miles from Arizona to take the
Nebraska job because he was eager to earn money to buy his daughter a
gown
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her high school graduation.

To get readers to care, Shipley explains, “They have to meet and get
to know, through the writing, the person who dies. You need the data
and statistics, but it really helps to make the readers grieve. These
people who die, they can’t be just workers, they have to be people
you know. That’s why you take a deep dive about who that whole
person was. He died in the cornfield to buy a graduation dress for his
daughter. That’s as core to the story as what his body temperature
was.”
 

_[STEVEN GREENHOUSE was a New York Times reporter for 31 years,
covering labor and workplace matters from 1995 to 2014. He also served
as the Times’ business correspondent in Chicago, as its European
economics correspondent in Paris, and as an economics and then
diplomatic correspondent in Washington. He is the author of “Beaten
Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present, and Future of American Labor,”
to be published this August by Knopf.]_

* Climate Change
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* Climate Crisis
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* worker deaths
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* Farm Workers
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* farm labor
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* Warehouse
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* truckers
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* UPS
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* unsafe working conditions
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* OSHA
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