News
Announcements, news and other shorter pieces about our research project.
Heat and work during the pandemic
Elizabeth Humphrys has published a new book chapter in Jesse Adams Stein and Chantel Carr’s edited volume Working through Planetary Breakdown: Labour, Skill and the Changing Climate. Her chapter is on the experiences of blue-collar United Workers Union members —...
Work Health and Safety, Adaptation and Climate Change
Dr Elizabeth Humphrys has a chapter in the new Elgar Companion to Decent Work and the Sustainable Development Goals. The compendium is a mammoth effort — it has 50 or so chapters from world leading scholars on key questions in the world of work, and critiques on the...
Inertia in transformed times: work health and safety amid climate change
In Dr Elizabeth Humphrys' recent article in the Journal of Industrial Relations, she examines the growing impacts of climate change on work health and safety (WHS) and argues that Australia is poorly prepared to protect workers from these risks. This is despite clear...
Temperature Triggers: Spain and China
‘Stop work’ temperature triggers have emerged as a prominent trade union demand to alleviate the risks of higher temperatures on workers. In a new report prepared for the Climate, Society and Environment Research Centre (CSERC) UTS and the Too Hot To Work project,...
Symposium: Labour and Climate Change
On 12 July Too Hot for Work and C-SERC convened a symposium for political economists, geographers and aligned social scientists investigating the impacts of climate change on workers. Researchers are examining a broad range of often intersecting issues — labour...
All Hands on Deck: A cross-disciplinary symposium
In July Dr Elizabeth Humphrys spoke at the All Hands on Deck Symposium at UTS, organised by Jesse Adams-Stein and Chantel Carr. Recordings from a number of sessions are now available on the website and Soundcloud. Elizabeth's talk on the Law. Labour and Climate panel...
Hot under the collar: climate change on the job
The following post was first published on the Progress in Political Economy blog Exposure to high heat and humidity in the workplace is a critical health and safety issue, and in Australia, where heat waves are occurring with more frequency and intensity as a result...
‘Zonked the hell out’
This week the first journal article based on our research with the United Workers Union was published in Economic and Labour Relations Review. The United Workers Union is one of the largest blue-collar unions in Australia, with approximately 150,000 members across 45...
Hot, hard and dangerous
Elizabeth Humphrys was recently a guest on the On the Job podcast, hosted by Francis Leach and Sally Rugg, discussing our report for the United Workers Union. From the podcast show notes... As the COP26 climate change talks in Glasgow loom up, Australia is on a...
Study reveals increased heat risks for workers
On 23 September 2021 we launched the final report on our project investigating the impact of high heat and climate change on members or the United Workers Union (UWU). The launch was part of the Australian Council of Trade Unions' (ACTU) Climate Safety at Work Summit,...