date: 30 April 2009
embargo: 00.01hrs Wednesday 6 May 2009
Getting hot and bothered at work
With our summers predicted to get gradually hotter and drier over the coming years, UK factories and offices will become increasingly uncomfortable and potentially hazardous place to work, the TUC has warned today (Wednesday) as it calls for the introduction of a new upper limit on workplace temperature.
In a new report out today, the TUC says that although employees are not expected to work when the temperature drops below 16OC (or 13OC if they are do physically demanding work), there are no similar restrictions for when the workplace becomes too hot.
And with long range weather forecasts suggesting a long, hot summer is on the way, the TUC would like to see the law changed so that employers are forced to act when the temperature inside hits 24OC, and that staff could be sent home and their employers prosecuted if it soared to 30OC (or 27OC for those engaged in physically demanding work).
When the temperature goes sky high at work, employees can suffer heat rashes, headaches, dizzy spells, fainting and heat cramps, says the report. Stifling hot working conditions also affect concentration, making workers feel tired and as a result more likely to endanger their own or their colleagues' safety.
Although UK safety laws require employers to provide safe, risk-free environments for their staff to work in, the absence of a maximum temperature in which people can work, means employees frequently work in places where it is too hot to safely do so, says the TUC.
TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said: 'Even when the summers are bad, as last year's was, the temperature in some workplaces can be unbearable for employees and potentially dangerous in others. No-one is expected to work in sub-zero temperatures but overheated employees are meant to carry on regardless of how high the office temperature soars. We need to see action now, before the impact of climate change is felt and our summers become hotter than ever.'
A recent TUC survey showed that even when the summers are not particularly great, many employees have to work in very hot conditions, particularly where they work in buildings with lots of windows. Ninety four per cent of respondents said their workplaces had been too hot to work in last summer, and four in ten (42 per cent) said they regularly worked in unbearably hot conditions.
Examples of workplaces where the mercury has been hitting the highs include a lab where last summer staff were working in temperatures of 32OC, a chicken factory where the soaring temperature was making staff feel dizzy and a school where the temperature in a classroom with two glass walls regularly rises to 32OC. (The TUC report says that it is generally accepted that people work best between 16O and 24OC.)
NOTES TO EDITORS:
-A report published by the TUC last week warned that employers were not doing enough to prepare for how the UK's changing climate would affect the lives and the jobs done by its employees. One of the recommendations of the report, Changing Work in a Changing Climate,
was that there should be a new maximum workplace temperature - http://www.tuc.org.uk/economy/tuc-16331-f0.pdf
- Today's report - The Case for a legally enforceable maximum temperature is at http://www.tuc.org.uk/extras/maxtemp2009.pdf
- All TUC press releases can be found at www.tuc.org.uk
- Register for the TUC's press extranet: a service exclusive to journalists wanting to access pre-embargo releases and reports from the TUC. Visit www.tuc.org.uk/pressextranet
Contacts:
Media enquiries:
Liz Chinchen T: 020 7467 1248 M: 07778 158175 E: media@tuc.org.uk
Rob Holdsworth T: 020 7467 1372 M: 07717 531150 E: rholdsworth@tuc.org.uk
Elly Brenchley T: 020 7467 1337 M: 07900 910624 E: ebrenchley@tuc.org.uk
Press release (700 words) issued 6 May 2009
