Workers who spend their days toiling in the sun or in sweltering warehouses and kitchens say they need more safeguards before the next heat wave.
“If we were to lock our animals in a car with those same conditions, we would be arrested. Yet workers are working in those conditions,” said Donald Nesbit, executive vice president of Local 372, the union that represents school cafeteria employees.
Nesbit was part of a roundtable discussion during New York’s climate week that included Julie Su, the city’s deputy mayor for economic justice, as well as representatives from some of the city’s major labor unions and workers for large private companies, like Amazon. The consensus was that this past summer was a scorcher, including a punishing heat wave in July.
On the agenda were protections and measures labor unions are asking of local employers to improve worker safety — and what the city can do to help. Su said heat has accounted for more deaths in New York City than hurricanes, tornadoes and flooding combined.
“Heat for working people is not just an inconvenience or a discomfort, it is actually a hazard,” Su said. “People die because simple precautions are not taken on the job.”
In June, Mayor Zohran Mamdani signed an executive order directing city agencies to create guidelines for worker safety in extreme heat.
“The workers building our skyline, delivering our packages, selling food on our street corners and keeping this city running deserve to come home safe at the end of every shift,” Mamdani said at the time. “In the past, workers have borne the burden of extreme heat while government looked the other way. We’re changing that because every worker’s life is worth protecting.”
Participants in the roundtable came ready with ideas. They want to see more training, in multiple languages, for how workers can protect themselves, and more cooling and ventilation systems for indoor workers and on-site cooling stations for those laboring outside. Other suggestions included hazard pay for extreme heat and employer assistance for heat-related medical incidents at the work site.
The panel also pushed for policy reform of worker’s compensation to include on-the-job heated-related illness. The city is currently reviewing whether such illnesses should be designated as a reportable health condition as part of a workers’ compensation claim.
While workers do have an avenue to file complaints and voice concerns about their employers through the city's Department of Consumer and Worker Protection and the Commission on Human Rights, there are no concrete guidelines or mandates when it comes to protecting workers from extreme heat.
According to Su, who served as labor secretary during the Biden administration, only the federal government can create mandates for private employers. Any rules the city creates would be non-mandatory for private companies, but they could benefit municipal workers.
”If you make clear what the standard should be, if you make it specific enough so they can't wriggle out of it to screw workers, then there are employers who will begin to come into compliance with that,” Su said.
As labor secretary, Su began work on what would have been the first-ever set of standards to protect workers from the hazards related to heat, but nothing has come of it since she left that role, she said.
Workers brought tales of what it’s like to do a job in brutal temperatures.
Amazon workers described warehouses where the air conditioners didn’t work, and returning to red-hot drivers’ seats while out on a delivery run. Amazon told Gothamist it has installed reflective white films on the roofs of 9,000 of its vehicles this year to reduce interior temperatures, and invested $29 million in hydration stations across the country for its workers.
O’Neil Hyatt, a ramp worker at JFK Airport, talked about lifting heavy cargo on the airport tarmac when water or shade may not be readily available.
“During the heat waves this summer, there was times that I felt dizzy,” Hyatt said. “I worry about passing out and falling,” said Hyatt, who is a member of the 32BJ, a branch of the Service Employees International Union.
And Nesbit, who worked in the kitchen of a Bushwick public school for about 17 years, said hours spent in hot kitchens can feel like torture.
“The saying goes, 'If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen,'” Nesbit said. “These workers that are feeding children cannot leave the kitchen. It isn't an option.”
