the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Jul 22, 2024
With temperatures reaching record-breaking levels, workers in much of the country are suffering on their jobs. While many office workers have air conditioning, many others do not. And outside workers such as construction and agricultural workers suffer from over-heating.
In Maryland, recent temperatures have been in the 90s and the heat index over 100 for days on end. The state legislature has passed a heat standard to keep workers safer. It provides for mandatory cooled and shaded breaks every two hours when temperatures go over 90 degrees. But these standards will not go into effect until most of this summer’s heat has passed.
Officially, only 36 U.S. workers died from heat sickness in 2021, the last year in which complete data is available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In the decade from 2011—2020 there were 34,000 work-related heat injuries and illnesses severe enough that workers had to take time away from their jobs. These figures are surely a severe undercount, according to the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA), because states have varying definitions for heat sickness and most data comes from corporate self-reporting.
Employers across the U.S. are pushing back on the idea of having to lose productive time to longer, more frequent breaks. They don’t want to own the problem of heat and climate change.
But guess what! The capitalists have created the current crisis through their complete disregard of earth’s climate and the life on it. For workers, it is a matter of survival to fight the bosses for protections against the heat.