SUMMER 2024 was the world’s hottest summer on record.

Workplace deaths and job disruptions due to climate change are on the rise — and it’s only set to grow.

At TUC this year, the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union (BFAWU) is pushing forward a motion on the climate’s impact on workers’ health, calling on unions and campaigners to build a mass movement for change.

“It’s normally just borderline uncomfortable in a bakery depending on which part you work,” says Sarah Woolley, general secretary of the union.

“When you’re looking at 40°C outside, you’re definitely talking 60, 70°C in a bakery.

“It’s horrific, especially if you’re next to the oven,” she says, adding that such conditions have the potential to push workers to the point of collapse.

BFAWU is pushing for a national maximum working temperature, and a furlough scheme for when conditions get extreme.

“If there’s a situation where it is unbearable, a site may say, go home, we can’t run the oven.

“But that then means that person’s losing out on a wage, which isn’t fair.

“(Workers) shouldn’t have to take a day’s holiday just because the world’s heating up.”

A scheme is already in place in France, where some workers are entitled to compensation during extreme weather events.

These measures would compel employers to invest in effective cooling solutions.

Extreme conditions pose higher risks to women going through menopause, and Woolley says that this needs to be taken seriously or it could risk discrimination.

The union supports heat strikes, inspired by the youth climate strikes, where young people worldwide skipped school to demand action.

With climate change posing an immediate risk to workers across so many sectors, the strikes aim to unite unions and campaigners to raise awareness through joint days of action.

Woolley explains that while this wouldn’t be a strike in the traditional sense due to legislation — “workers could get to a point where they take industrial action on the levels of temperature in their workplace and it would be a bona fide grievance if nothing’s being put in place.

“If it is so hot that it’s a danger and it’s not safe to be in that workplace, then they could use section 44 under the health and safety legislation to remove themselves from that danger as well.”

Another motion submitted by BFAWU focuses on tackling sexual harassment in the workplace.

The union raised the alarm about the “toxic culture” at one of the largest employers in the food sector — McDonald’s.

In 2019, BFAWU reported over 1,000 cases of women being abused, and predatory employees being moved to different stores rather than sacked.

Last year, McDonald’s UK boss acknowledged that little had changed, with the chain receiving one to two sexual harassment complaints every week.

BFAWU wants to see a reporting system brought into legislation as a requirement, similar to how accidents are reported in the workplace under the Health and Safety Executive’s (HSE) Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations system.

A “whistle-blowing line” could be implemented, so workers can report incidents anonymously.

Employers would be alerted, and unions would contact the worker to help them through the next steps. An umbrella body including the TUC, EHRC and HSE would oversee the process.

Each case would have a reference number, which firms would be required to disclose.

“So if they’ve had 104 reference numbers given out and still got the same the year after, we can then start challenging employers on what are they actually doing to reduce this,” Woolley says.

There’s currently a limit of three months and one day to report sexual harassment — a barrier BFAWU is calling for the removal of.

“It might take six months of counselling before you’re even strong enough to say: ‘This has happened to me,’” Woolley says.

“Not everybody’s ready to come forward about what could be a horrific period.”

Immoral firms have used non-disclosure agreements to intimidate workers and stop them from speaking out.

“We’ve had experiences where the survivors raised a grievance, followed that process, and the outcome of the grievance is a non-disclosure agreement to pay the survivor to leave the company,” Woolley says.

“So the perpetrator’s still there, the survivor can’t tell anybody else, and then they go on to do it again and again.”

“In other situations, they’ve got a survivor to sign an NDA and move the perpetrator to another store or another department or location.

“They’re not able to tell anybody there because they’ve signed this agreement.

McDonald’s is one company found to be using NDAs to hide sexual harassment rife within the company

Last year, the chain signed an agreement with the EHRC to implement a “zero-tolerance” approach and deliver training for employees.

“What we’ve been told from workers within McDonald’s is they’ve addressed the training, but it’s an iPad at the side of the coffee machine, for example, that they’re flicking through. It’s not taken seriously. It’s a tick-box exercise.”

“That’s not changing the culture.”

Woolley says that it’s different to hearing workers’ voices, and that a reporting system could empower survivors to disclose what’s happened to them and hold firms to account.

She says that the casualisation of work “massively contributes” to the prevalence of sexual harassment.

“That’s why one of our manifesto asks was around getting rid of all zero-hours contracts, not just exploitative ones, because all zero-hours contracts can be exploitative.

“If you’ve got power over somebody’s earning capability, then for a lot of people that power goes to their heads.”

Employers or managers may offer extra hours in exchange for dates or inappropriate photos, while workers may feel they need to put up with it because they can’t afford to stay no, or challenge it out of fear of losing their jobs.

The labour movement must look inward and address sexual harassment as well.

“It’s something that’s happening in every trade union,” Woolley says

She emphasises the need for “political will and open, honest conversations,” over a “look what we’re doing” attitude.

Health and safety is core to many of BFAWU’s campaigns — including food security.

A survey by the union found last year that 45 per cent of their members working in the food sector had skipped meals.

“Imagine somebody sitting down with the kids, making sure they’ve got food, and then doing a 12-hour night shift on an empty stomach — the health and safety implications, and the implications on their own body is, is massive.”

The union has been campaigning to make the right to nutritious food enshrined in law, for the provision of free school meals, and capping the profit power of supermarkets to stop them from making food unaffordable.

It’s also part of the Food and Work Network, a coalition looking at how to enact change beyond the sticking plaster of foodbanks.

“I don’t think (Labour) appreciates just how big the picture is and that they can’t just rely on goodwill and charity.

She points out that if people aren’t eating healthily, it has direct implications for the NHS.

“It’s much bigger than an individual’s crisis that they’re dealing with. It’s actually a national crisis, so it needs a national response.”

Unions were maligned by the previous governments. Woolley is keen to get back to basics to show why they are needed more now than ever.

“I don’t think it should be about just saying we want to get a recognition agreement and that’s the be-all and end-all.

“That’s like saying: ‘Let’s get a Labour government and the world will change.’ It doesn’t work like that.

“It’s about identifying and listening to the issues that are impacting (workers) on a day-to-day basis and helping them organise around it.

“They are the union, and I think we’ve just got to get back to basics and show people that by organising, by joining a union, they are the masters of their own destiny.”

Sarah Woolley is general secretary of BFAWU — follow her on X @sarahwoolley01.