PAME Statement-Immediate Measures of Protection for the Workers During the Heatwave

All trade unions at the workplaces to protect workers’ health during the heatwave

No worker alone! Immediate protection measures!

Colleagues

Based on experience, the lack of health and safety measures in workplaces leads to tragic results with fatal accidents and crippled workers.

In heatwave conditions such as now, the risks for workers are multiplied because, in addition to the intensification of work, exhausting hours, heat also has a great effect.

The total absence of state control mechanisms in the workplaces, under the responsibility of the Ministry of Labour, makes it easier for big business to blackmail workers to continue working in heatwave conditions, playing their lives on a game of ‘heads or tails’.

The Government and the Ministry of Labour have a huge responsibility for the situation that has developed.

Here and now the trade unions must intervene so that immediate action be taken today:

We demand:

• Immediate stop of all outdoor works when the temperature exceeds 38°C. Similarly, immediate stop of work in particularly heat-stressed areas (yards, machine shops, foundries, shipbuilding, glassworks, machine shops, greenhouses, etc.). Full payment of the daily wage without any reduction.
• Absence from work, when heatwave conditions prevail, of workers belonging to high-risk groups (heart patients, cancer patients, diabetics, kidney patients, pregnant women, etc.). Full payment of their daily wage.
• Frequent breaks of appropriate duration, depending on the environmental conditions and the characteristics of the work, the intensity of the work and the work uniform – PPE used, to prevent heat stress for workers.
• Limiting heavy work when temperature and humidity conditions create suffocating conditions.
• Providing workers on a continuous basis with potable cool water near their workplace.
• Providing adequate air-conditioned break areas for employee rest.

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