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Paper short abstract

This research explores how trade unions and farmworkers in Spain and Germany address heat-related health risks amid rising global temperatures and labour precarity. It examines workers' strategies for protection and control over their bodies and work in the context of ecological breakdown.

Paper long abstract

Exposure to high temperatures at work combined with little control over working conditions has long made workers vulnerable to heat-related injury and premature death. With rapidly rising global temperatures due to the climate crisis combined with the precarity of labour markets in the post-neoliberal era, heat poses an increasingly widespread and dangerous health risk across sectors worldwide. This research investigates how trade unions in Europe conceptualise the interconnected issues of ecology, health, and labour, and how they organize against heat stress and related health issues. Focusing on the agricultural sector - one of the most exposed to climate-related heat risks - the study draws on original empirical data gathered through ongoing participatory research with unionized farmworkers in Spain and Germany. It examines how workers in these contrasting contexts make demands and develop strategies for protection from heat-related health risks from the state and employers, and why. Preliminary findings reveal diverse strategies employed by workers. For example, migrant farmworkers in Andalusia are attempting to politicise their rights to take breaks at work, challenging both immediate health hazards and broader ecological and economic dynamics. Overall, this research explores how heat exposes, heightens and shapes conflicts around workers’ control over their time and bodies amid ecological breakdown. It also offers reflections on the potential and limitations of different contextual strategies for labour organisation and resistance in the climate crisis.