2023-07-02 05:00:27
On paper, it is the most comprehensive law on a planetary scale. Except that, as researcher Natasha Iskander explains, “in fact, workers have no real autonomy to manage their work effort”. And that’s the rub. The law may exist, if the managers put pressure to continue the work and that the production objectives are not revised downwards, the employees are forced to work at the risk of their health. The documentary reveals this evidence: it is not the heat alone that kills, it is the working conditions dictated by an intensive production model in which the employees have no say in the matter, in a context of global warming.
In Central America, converted to intensive agriculture to meet the growth of world demand, sugar cane workers are paid by the piece and are therefore encouraged to work ever more and ever faster. In the United States, UPS couriers ride in trucks in which the temperature often approaches 50°C. In these trucks, no air conditioning but software with on-board cameras to “track downtime”. In India, female textile workers work in gigantic warehouses and at breakneck speeds. Front-line workers are the first to be affected by global warming, and this phenomenon does not only concern countries in the South.
Scientists point out that Europe is experiencing global warming twice as high as the global average. Many economic sectors are already concerned: construction, public works, but also agriculture and tourism. Employers are not naïve and are taking measures to prevent the risks linked to climate change and anticipate the drop in productivity because, as documentary filmmaker Mickaël Lefrançois rightly points out, “it would cost more to do nothing”.
Start earlier
Some companies, particularly in the construction sector, are already deploying initiatives such as the organization of working hours to protect the health of employees (starting work earlier, increasing the frequency of breaks, etc.). However, we cannot count on the moral boost of economic actors alone. In France, labor law indicates that employers must ensure the health and safety of all their employees, but they are free to take the measures they deem necessary. To date, no legal text specifies a maximum temperature threshold beyond which an employee could leave his workstation.
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