To sustain healthy and safe conditions at work, unprecedented action is urgently needed.
This summer saw new global records in heatwaves, extreme weather events and wildfires in extremely dry regions. According to Copernicus, July 22nd was the hottest day on earth in recent history—a record previously broken the day before. Europe is the fastest-warming continent, the European Environmental Agency reports. Since the 1980s, Europe has heated at about twice the global rate.
The recently published Lancet Countdown report for Europe demonstrates that climate change is already affecting human beings and societies as a whole. It focuses on the adverse health effects, underlining the need for ‘rapid health-responsive climate mitigation and adaptation actions’. The workplace is a key area for such actions.
Directly affected
Workplaces are directly affected by climate change. Physical and psychosocial risks related to work may be reinforced, for instance by rising temperatures and extreme weather events, also affecting workers’ wellbeing. Even only moderately higher temperatures can affect cognitive performance and decision-making, and increase the risk of work-related accidents and injuries. Outdoor workers, indoor workers without access to cooling and frontline workers are particularly vulnerable, as the Lancet report highlighted.
While employers are legally responsible for the health and safety of workers and are obliged to carry out risk assessments under binding European Union legislation, staff representatives and local trade unions play a crucial role in regulating workplace hazards. They can prompt employers to reduce on-the-job hazards, influence the level of regulatory oversight and educate workers about occupational risks.
Additionally, emerging or reinforced risks linked to climate change can be addressed through social dialogue between employers and trade unions in the workplace or at sector level. This can entail such measures as reducing the time spent on high-intensity activities, introducing longer periods of rest or adapting workday schedules.
Workplace risk assessments
Despite these potentialities, employers and unions seem slow to include adaptation to climate change in their policies on occupational safety and health (OSH), possibly because they still consider related hazards as exceptional. Mandatory workplace risk assessments—a key tool for identifying and mitigating hazards in accordance with EU legislation—are often implemented unevenly, across countries, sectors and companies of different sizes.
A major obstacle, according to the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work, is the belief that occupational risks are already well-known. This may be particularly dangerous when it comes to climate change, given the magnitude and cumulative character of the changes under way—likely only to become more severe.
Specific workplace-level indicators are needed to monitor developments and enable tailor-made adaptation initiatives. To broaden the basis for evidence-based policy-making, insights from public statistics are necessary—large-sample European surveys which gather information in various countries and sectors could be expanded on.
Detailed knowledge lacking
The European Survey of Enterprises on New and Emerging Risks (ESENER) contains various items on risk assessments. These could be extended to gather information on the number of companies incorporating climate-related aspects.
While it is likely that risk assessments in sectors such as construction, where outdoor work prevails, already include aspects such as heat or exposure to ultraviolet radiation, we lack detailed knowledge. It also remains to be seen whether such aspects play a role where employee representation and OSH culture are weaker, particularly in smaller service-sector workplaces.
Climate change itself brings psychosocial risks, such as fear of job loss or at least job transition, with various sectors undergoing transformation. Whether the risks thus generated are addressed in workplaces is an empirical question too.
The European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS), which targets individual workers, includes a question on ‘exposure to heat’ and a range of other items on health and safety at work. Additional questions, focused on whether a risk assessment has been carried out or specific actions taken to address climate change within their workplace, would provide valuable insights. Although the EWCS does target workers, not workplaces, the information they offer can provide clues about the engagement of workplaces with climate change.
Until statistical indicators and data addressing the implications of climate change for workplaces become available, qualitative research can help raise awareness and identify practices suitable for large-scale replication. Such research should focus on concrete initiatives to adapt workplaces to the new realities resulting from climate change.
Health-promoting work
To deal with climate change, researchers, policy-makers and the social partners should put a focus on the workplace and aspects related to it. It is the context in which decisions about work design are taken.
Organising work in a human and health-promoting way in times of climate change is crucial. On the one hand, it keeps workers employed amid staff shortages and so affects prosperity. On the other, it contributes to preventing occupational diseases and subsequent early retirement, benefiting workers’ health and social security and welfare systems alike.
The views expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of their employers
Nadja Dörflinger is a senior researcher in the 'Changing World of Work' department at the Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (BAuA) in Germany. Her interests include employment relations, labour markets, trade unions and service work in a comparative perspective.
Adrien Thomas is a research scientist at the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER), focused on employment relations and the social and environmental dimensions of sustainable development.