On June 23, Shae Parker had to leave her shift early at a gas station in Columbia, South Carolina, to go to the emergency room due to heat exhaustion; she was not paid for missing the rest of her shift. The air conditioning at his work has been on the fritz for weeks, he said, and his station heats up easily as the sun beams through its large windows.
“I’m nauseated, overheated, lightheaded,” he said. “We don’t have free water, we don’t have a water level on the soda machine, the ice machine is broken, so we have to buy water. The last few weeks have been very hot. It’s very difficult to breathe when you get dizzy and lightheaded. The fatigue is like 10 times worse because your body is completely drained. I had to take two bags of fluid to be dehydrated even though I drink water.
Millions of Americans faced dangerous temperatures earlier this month, as a heat dome covered the midwest and eastern United States. U National Weather Service issued to advice of heat for most of South Carolina as temperatures reach the 90sF (32C).
However, workers across the country who work in the heat both indoors and outdoors have to spend the summer without heat protection in the workplace. Like Parker, many workers are left to try to treat their heat stress symptoms on their own.
This past June was the hottest month of June on record worldwide, while July 2023 to June 2024 were the hottest 12 months on record, with 2024 on pace to break 2023 as the hottest year on record.
The Biden administration announced proposal of an Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha) rule to protect 36 million American workers from the heat on July 2. But the implementation will probably not happen for several years, since the release of the proposed rule is only third of seven steps in the Osha regulatory process. It could face challenges in the courts, causing further delays, or be derailed altogether if Donald Trump wins the 2024 election. The rule provides stronger rules and higher fines on employers to protect workers.
Destiny Mervin, a restaurant worker in Atlanta, Georgia, and a member of the Southern Service Workers Union, said she was constantly sweating while on the job and had to change her shirt during her shift. turn because of the heat it has been.
“Someone passed out two weeks ago and the week before that, someone had a seizure,” Mervin said in a news release. “A worker doesn’t have to die for Popeyes for employers to take the unbearable heat seriously.”
In 2023, an estimated 2,300 people in the United States died from heat-related illnesses, the highest heat-related death record in 45 years.
“The extreme heat that the United States has experienced over the past month is particularly dangerous for the people who have to work in it — hundreds of thousands of workers succumb to heat-related illness, injury and death every year,” he said. Rebecca Dixon, president and CEO of the National Employment Law Project.
“The risk of heat hazards in the workplace is especially acute for colored workerswho are more likely to work in jobs that expose them to excessive heat because of occupational segregation” Dixon said. “As human-caused climate change produces more extreme temperatures, the need for strong federal heat protection becomes more urgent each summer.”
Priscilla Hoyle, a cabin cleaner at Charlotte Douglas International Airport, has gotten sick and had to go home twice in the past year due to heat exhaustion, with the incident most recently a few weeks ago. Both times no medical treatment was provided when she became ill at work.
“I got really sick, I could barely breathe, I had to run out of the plane and I was on the side throwing up,” Hoyle said. “It’s very draining, it’s very tiring. You have to walk from contest to contest in nothing but heat. You’re dripping with sweat and you can’t hydrate.”
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Damarkus Hudson has also worked as a cabin cleaner at Charlotte Douglas International Airport in North Carolina for two years where he is constantly exposed to heat without adequate protection or support, he said.
Last year, Hudson missed work due to heat exhaustion and was offered no medical treatment. Instead, he was given time to drink water and cool off until his shift ended shortly after the incident.
“The break room was full and I tried to go outside to get some fresh air, but there was no breeze and I just passed out, I couldn’t cool off,” Hudson said.
He noted that a co-worker poured water on him to cool him down, which sent him into shock, and that other workers experienced similar symptoms at work.
He cleans four to five planes an hour in the sweltering heat, often walking long distances between the concourses in the airport, and he said that the air conditioning in the vehicles that travel between the floors does not always work.
“We are always exposed to the heat. Working in the heat, you feel nauseous, you feel sick and tired,” he added. “We don’t have enough water and when we do, it’s usually not cold water, and we don’t have extra breaks to cool off.”
LaShonda Brown, a garbage truck driver at the Charlotte airport, said heat problems are impacting airport workers across the United States. She claims that the trucks they use do not have working air conditioning, that she and her workers are rarely provided with water or rest breaks, which makes the impact of the heat even worse since the work is already physically demanding when it is not not hot outside.
“There are a lot of people who have been hospitalized, who are going through this heat,” Brown said. “We sweat so much. We don’t have time to put water in our body. We are human – the same way you are hot, we are hot.”
