The planet is heating up. In the month of July, the record for the hottest day on earth was made and then broken the following day. 2023 was the hottest year on record, and 2024 is on track to beat that record. The impacts of our changing climate are not felt equally. Instead, around the globe, low-wage workers are experiencing the climate crisis as another aspect of the intersecting crises of global capitalism. That’s why grassroots organizations around the world have recognized that climate solutions require addressing the causes of climate change – and moving away from the extractive economic models that caused the crisis in the first place. The climate crisis is forcing changes on workplaces, communities, and the planet as a whole. “Transition is inevitable. Justice is not,” states the Climate Justice Alliance as they lay out the framework for the concept of a just transition.

Our members organize with low-wage workers in the agricultural industries, in garment factories, and in the construction industry – some of the most impacted workers around the globe. From them we draw examples of both some of the key issues facing workers and some examples of the solutions needed for immediate worker protections.

Extreme Heat: An Urgent, Deadly Workplace Issue

Extreme heat is one of the most obvious symptoms of the climate crisis. The impacts of heat stress on workers is both immediate (heat exhaustion, heat stroke, even death) and longer-term (leading to kidney disease and other serious and debilitating chronic illnesses). In addition, research has shown that extreme heat likely compounds existing workplace hazards, causing an additional 20,000 extra injuries per year in the U.S. alone. According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), “2.41 billion workers – 71 per cent of the working population – are exposed to excessive heat, resulting in 22.85 million injuries and 18,970 deaths annually.”

The impacts of the rising climate threat are not distributed equally. The lowest paid workers in the U.S. suffer five times more heat-related injuries than higher paid workers. Black and brown workers are also more likely to die on the job as they are over-represented in dangerous occupations and outdoor work. Extreme heat does not stay in the workplace. Instead, these same workers are more likely to live in sub-par housing, without air conditioning, shady areas, or access to the kind of medical care or workers’ compensation that helps recover from long hot days on the job or heat-related illnesses. At every step, the climate crisis compounds the effects of systemic racism on communities of color.

Extreme heat does not stay in the workplace. Instead, these same workers are more likely to live in sub-par housing, without air conditioning, shady areas, or access to the kind of medical care or workers’ compensation that helps recover from long hot days on the job or heat-related illnesses. At every step, the climate crisis compounds the effects of systemic racism on communities of color.

Rising heat is also an issue of gender justice. Women working low-wage jobs often face discrimination and gender-based violence, which exacerbates the difficulty of speaking up about working conditions. Research on women doing farmwork shows that they are more susceptible to heat-related illness, especially if pregnant. Garment workers describe how the layers of uniforms they are forced to wear exacerbate extreme heat. Limited to just two bathroom breaks per long shift, women report restricting their water consumption, which can cause kidney disease in the long term and urinary tract infections in the shorter term. Women are already disproportionately burdened by care and domestic work; climate breakdown makes those tasks harder even as their paid work in sweltering conditions becomes increasingly exhausting.

Climate Crisis Exacerbates Existing Power Imbalances

The impacts of the climate crisis on working people extend beyond heat. Increasing forest fires mean farmworkers and other outdoor workers are forced to labor in unhealthy air. The rise in extreme rainfall events in places like Cambodia and Bangladesh mean that garment workers struggle to safely commute to factory jobs amid widespread flooding. Low wages and piece rate pay means that across the globe, these workers already struggle to make ends meet. Missing work or working slower means lost wages, tipping workers from precarity into catastrophe.

The race to the bottom for wages and working conditions exacerbates the impacts of the climate crisis at every step. In Cambodia, temperatures regularly rise above 104 degrees Fahrenheit during the hot season. Yet many of the buildings used for garment manufacturing were not designed as factories. Instead, workers complain of heat that makes it hard to breathe in buildings without air conditioning, or the electricity needed to run fans consistently, as the report “Hot Trends: How the global garment industry shapes climate change vulnerability in Cambodia” documents.

Bangladesh is one of the countries most affected by the climate crisis. Rising seas and increasing severe weather events and flooding are driving people to migrate. These factors exacerbate already poor working conditions. One study found that wages are going down for workers in the garment sector, while another points to increasing gender-based violence. At every turn, the climate crisis exacerbates existing power imbalances.

Corporations Keep Cashing In

The fight to get the companies and countries most responsible for climate change to act has been going on for decades now. Yet too many pledges for climate action have been largely ineffective and wholly unenforceable, more voluntary commitments and greenwashing than enforceable binding agreements or funding for measurable action.

Unchecked, the changing climate is just another crisis for corporations to exploit for their own benefit.

The changing climate is already changing the global economy. Increasingly volatile weather, decreasing availability of fresh water, and other climate impacts are changing where produce is grown. Simultaneously, U.S. trade policy and lax regulation in sourcing countries help make these changes even more profitable for companies to shift production to follow lower wages and working conditions. This isn’t a distant threat. In recent years, Wendy’s moved their tomato sourcing from Florida to Mexico, dodging higher labor standards. Driscoll’s and A&W produce have moved a substantial amount of production from California to Mexico. This move was advantageous to companies. Workers’ minimum daily wage in Mexico is the same as the minimum hourly wage in California, and it granted them access to water with far fewer regulations, siphoning vital water from local residents into irrigating plump berries for export.

In the garment industry, a study found that increasing natural disasters is driving migration from rural areas of Bangladesh. As these displaced people flood urban job markets, factories can take advantage of the people hungry for jobs, reducing wages and incentives to improve conditions.

The Covid-19 pandemic was a perfect example of how the brands at the top of supply chains were able to push the risk down the supply chain. When shops shuttered and orders dwindled, too many fashion brands cut orders or refused to pay for production, pushing the financial consequences onto suppliers, who in turn passed it onto workers. The result: an estimated $11.85 billion in unpaid legally-owed wages. In 2024, millions of garment workers’ lives have still not recovered from this crisis as many still wait to be paid wages they are owed and others have gone deep into debt to make ends meet. Unchecked, the changing climate is just another crisis for corporations to exploit for their own benefit.

Regulatory Action Lags Behind Urgent Need for Worker Protections

The climate crisis is urgent and worsening by every measure. It is changing working conditions, jobs, communities, economies, and the very terrain on which they are built. Yet regulations to address even the most basic workplace protections are lagging both in the U.S. and around the globe.

More needs to be done to make these rights real – and to ensure that all working people have safe working conditions. A truly just transition cannot leave workers behind just because of the state they live in.

Every delay has a high cost: U.S. workplace deaths specifically due to environmental heat were up nearly 20% in 2022 over the previous year. The actual numbers are an undercount; some researchers estimate the number to be closer to 2000 per year, ranking heat as the top of cause of workplace fatalities. The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) recently proposed new federal regulations to protect working people from extreme heat. These regulations are much needed. Across the U.S., a patchwork of heat protection regulations have developed in the absence of federal rulemaking. Yet even as some states and municipalities have developed rules, a few states (notably Florida and Texas) have gone in the other direction, passing legislation preempting local rulemaking to protect workers. Even in states such as California with strong rules on paper, enforcement continues to lag as is too often the case with workers’ rights.

More needs to be done to make these rights real – and to ensure that all working people have safe working conditions. A truly just transition cannot leave workers behind just because of the state they live in.

Even as state-level action is slow, worker organizations are taking action. The Fair Food Program (FFP)’s standards have been recognized as the strongest heat protections for workers. They include requirements for shade, rest breaks, and hydration. These protections were added to the Code of Conduct for participating growers in 2021, responding to the urgent need in the fields. These standards are part of the legally-binding agreements that all FFP buyers are held to. Workers, supervisors, and growers are now trained to recognize the signs of heat stress and workers are protected from retaliation for exercising their rights to water and rest. This protection from retaliation that is engrained in the Fair Food Program standards (and in the standards of other WSR programs) is essential to making rights real–addressing the power imbalances that are at the root of workplace abuses.

A Just Transition Must Address Power in the Global Economy

Heat protections are an important start. Yet as climate change continues, there is an urgent need to take on the broader issues exacerbated by the growing crisis. The wage theft crisis brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic was an example of how the global economy is designed to push risk and consequences down to the lowest-paid workers. But the worker-driven response to that crisis also provides a blueprint for adaptations to the climate crisis. The Pay Your Workers campaign calls for a binding agreement to get fashion brands to contribute to a severance fund for the workers who make their clothes. Crises such as the 2023 earthquake in Turkey have shown that such protections are needed as the brand response in such cases is predictable.

Real solutions need to be driven by and serve those who have been made most vulnerable by the intersecting–and escalating–crises we face.

In all these cases, it is clear that the climate crisis is growing far faster than the state regulatory response can evolve. And even when there is state regulation, the same obstacles to enforcement remain. The people who hold low-wage jobs in the global economy are most often drawn from the ranks of those who are most exploitable due to immigration status, caste, language, gender, etc. As we already see, the climate crisis is driving more people into precarity, forcing migration and undermining livelihoods. Real solutions need to be driven by and serve those who have been made most vulnerable by the intersecting–and escalating–crises we face.

The examples drawn from WSR programs are just a few of the urgently needed adaptations in this crisis. Time and again, both corporate and government responses to the climate crisis have relied too heavily on voluntary solutions designed more for greenwashing than to force a change in course. So far, we see the climate crisis is exacerbating existing inequalities, yet there remains another way forward. Worker organizations need to be at the forefront of developing legally-binding, enforceable solutions, both for immediate protections and adaptations, and in charting a path towards the future.