Analysing labour on a warming planet
The link between labour productivity, human health and climate change gets scant attention, as the focus remains on economic and infrastructure resilience. The International Labour Organization’s latest report points to the need to ensure that labour beco
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The International Labour Organization’s (ILO) latest report, ‘Ensuring safety and health at work in a changing climate’, is an urgent call to ensure the future of labour is climate proofed and to address the constantly evolving work environment as the planet warms. The UN body states that well over a third of the world’s population, are exposed to excessive heat annually, leading to almost 23 million work-related injuries.
What are the emerging hazards?
The ILO has identied six key impacts of climate change. They are — excessive heat, solar ultraviolet radiation, extreme weather events, workplace air pollution, vector-borne diseases and agrochemicals. These could lead to a range of health issues such as stress, stroke and exhaustion. The ILO mentions agriculture workers, workers in the construction sector, conservancy workers in cities and those employed in transport and tourism as most aected by climate change. It is also important to take note of the global rise in gig employment, which is highly heat-susceptible. Gig workers constitute about 1.5% of India’s total work force, which is projected to grow to about 4.5% by 2030, according to a Nasscom study. In the Indian context, all these segments put together suggest that about 80% of the country’s 2023 workforce of 600 million is susceptible to heat-related hazards.
Which sectors are a ected?
Agriculture is by far the most heat susceptible sector globally, particularly so in the developing world, where informal farm labourers work with little to no weather protection. The NSSO data of July 2018-June 2019 reveal that almost 90% of Indian farmers own less than two hectares of land, and earn an average monthly income of a little over ₹10,000 with farmers in the bottom three States of Jharkhand, Odisha and West Bengal earning as low as ₹4,895, ₹5,112, and ₹6,762. This leaves little room for them to invest in adapting to a warming planet.
Agriculture is followed by India’s sprawling Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) sector that employs about 21% of the country’s workforce, or more than 123 million workers. The overwhelming informalisation of the sector has meant little to no oversight of worker conditions by State Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) departments, leaving them highly vulnerable to heat hazards. This sector is followed by the building and construction segment which constitutes about 70 million workers, almost 12% of India’s workforce. Workers here must cope with the urban heat island eect, as construction is a highly urban-centric economy, with rising growth in cities. Construction workers are also the most prone to physical injuries and air pollution related health hazards, like asthma, as several Indian cities are among the most polluted globally.
What laws address workplace safety ?
A range of more than 13 central laws in India including, the Factories Act, 1948, the Workmen Compensation Act, 1923, the Building and Other Construction Workers Act, 1996, the Plantations Labour Act, 1951, the Mines Act, 1952 and the Inter-State Migrant Workmen Act, 1979, regulate working conditions across several sectors. These laws were consolidated and amended in September 2020 under one law — the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020 (OSH Code, 2020). While several unions are critical of the new law for watering down safety and inspection standards, the Union government is yet to o¡cially notify its enforcement. This has meant that unions and the judiciary continue to rely on the older laws to seek redress and accountability.
The Indian Factories Act denes a factory as an enterprise with “10 or more” workers, but those registered under this law are less than a quarter of a million based on the latest available data. The Labour Bureau in its 2020 report observes “an increase of 2.48% in the number of total registered factories that is, from 2,22,012 in the beginning of the year to 2,27,510 at the end of the year 2020.” This means the overwhelming majority of India’s 64 million MSMEs are not registered under this law, and are therefore outside the purview of governmental inspections.
What do they say about heat hazards?
When it comes to dealing with occupational heat, the Factories Act broadly denes “ventilation and temperature” and leaves it to the States to decide optimal standards based on specic industries. However, these regulations were framed more than ve decades back. For instance, Maharashtra framed its rules under the law in 1963, while Tamil Nadu did so in 1950. Both these rules mention a maximum wet bulb temperature of 30°C on a shop ¦oor with a height of 1.5 metres and also mention provisioning “adequate air movement of at least 30 meters per minute”.
But these rules lack a breakdown of thermal comfort based on the level of activity, nor do they mention air conditioning, or other cooling alternatives. This is not surprising as the rules were framed much before air conditioning became common as a heat coping method. But in the developing world, air conditioning is still a luxury at homes and a signicant expense for businesses. With a warming climate, the government predicts 50% of Indian homes would have ACs by 2037, but we lack these numbers for businesses, indicating an urgent need to update India’s Factories Act to incorporate technological changes in provisioning thermal comfort at businesses and add more categories of industries based on evolving production processes. Brazil for instance, mandates a stoppage of work
“in cases where the WBGT (Wet Bulb Global Temperature) rises above 29.4°C for low intensity work, 27.3°C for moderate intensity work, 26.0°C for high intensity work, and 24.7°C for very high intensity work,” the ILO mentions.
Speaking about extreme heat and instances of friction with top corporate management, S. Kannan, the leader of the recognised union at the BMW assembly plant at Mahindra World City, Chennai (which represents more than 200 of the 350 employees), pointed to an instance at the company where workers demanded additional “lemon juice, buttermilk, and tender coconuts at the canteen” to ensure hydration last year. He claimed that the workers concerns were scoed at by the management as “petty” issues for “high income earners”. Moreover, Mr. Kannan said that unions are pressured to submit not only from the management but from the State’s bureaucracy who point to the “di¡culty” in getting top class industries to set up shop in Tamil Nadu. They accuse unions of disincentivising MNCs from their expansion plans.
What about other climate hazards?
Amendments are also required to address the handling of e¨uents and byproducts disposal, as they could signicantly impact human health based on temperature. Hindustan Unilever’s thermometer manufacturing plant in Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu was shut in 2001, as it was found disposing mercury-laced glass waste in the centre of the town. Frontline reports that the company dumped 7.4 tonnes, leaving townspeople exposed to a highly toxic and vapourable chemical that causes a range of diseases from birth defects to several types of cancer. “This was our main case in the Madras High Court against the company,” tells S. Meenakshi, who was among a battery of lawyers representing retrenched workers and townspeople seeking redress for the serious illnesses caused across Kodaikanal that were attributed to Mercury exposure. A charge denied by Unilever, even as it reached an out of court settlement with workers in 2016 after a decades-long battle.
Another signicant occupational illness to be addressed in the coming decades would be the possible rise in silicosis cases. Silicosis is a fatal and incurable pulmonary disease caused by what is commonly called “lung dust”, the ne particulate matter emitted in the mines of coal, precious gems like quartz and diamonds and stone quarries. India is set to record its highest coal production ever in the nancial year 2023-24 and has expanded the number of mines to meet rising power demand, leading to an increase in the probability of silica exposure. In 2016, the Supreme Court ordered the Gujarat government to pay ₹3 lakh as compensation to the families of 238 victims who died of silicosis while working at a quartz mine in Godhra. The Court blamed Gujarat’s bureaucracy for ‘neglecting’ to protect the adivasi migrant labourers who worked in the mines.
It would have been the job of inspectors under the Factories Act to inspect and enforce the provisioning gears that protect employees from silica exposure. While the T.N. and Maharashtra rules under the Factories Act elaborate on silica exposure prevention, they do not mandate the use of silica removal technologies at stone quarries or mines. Again, these technologies were not available when these rules were framed. Mr. Kannan says that, “labour conciliation, industrial safety and worker welfare are weak wings of the government. There are several vacancies, both at the inspector level, and at the clerical level, and our main concern is training, sensitisation and the competence of inspectors to conduct specialised inspections.” He spoke about instances where inspectors fear the “in¦uence that private sector management, particularly, MNC’s wield” with State bureaucrats. However, a retired o¡cial from Tamil Nadu’s Directorate of Industrial Safety and Health, R.
Jayakumar countered the charge of incompetence and unlled job posts in the department he headed. He stated vacancies might have been temporary. “In fact, when the BOCW Act (Buildings and Construction Workers Act, 1996) was enacted, we formed a new wing and created new posts to look into its implementation,” Mr. Jayakumar said, referring to the law that regulates employment in the construction sector. But he admitted that climate change raises concerns about working conditions.
Often the link between labour productivity, human health and climate change gets scant attention, as the focus remains on economic and infrastructure resilience. The ILO report points to the need to ensure a universally accepted regulatory framework to climate-proof work and workers.