About
Environmental change, including climate change, is most directly felt by people who cannot escape its impacts. This includes exposed workers, whose source of livelihood may put them directly at risk from high heat and extreme weather events.
Too Hot to Work
Climate change is contributing to higher average temperatures, higher humidity, longer heatwaves and disrupted weather, as well as more intense drought, storms, floods and bushfires. Climate change is an urgent public health issue and a major threat to safe and decent working conditions. The health and safety impacts include excessive heat, UV exposure, extreme weather events, workplace air pollution and vector-borne diseases.
High heat is the biggest problem, and the biggest killer of workers. The ILO estimates that 2.4 billion workers encounter excessive heat during their work each year, and that excessive heat is responsible for an estimated 22.85 million occupational injuries, 2.09 million disability-adjusted life annually years (DALYs, the loss of an equivalent year of full health), and 18,970 deaths.
In 2019 the ILO put the world on notice ‘that without action to arrest the problem climate impacts would ‘destroy jobs and livelihoods on an unprecedented scale’. In their 2024 landmark report, Ensuring Safety and Health at Work in a Changing Climate, they stated that not only does the situation remain grim but that WHS protections globally ‘have struggled to keep up with the evolving risks from climate change, resulting in worker mortality and morbidity’.
The Too Hot to Work project at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) has been partnering with councils, think tanks and trade unions to advance new research into how to tackle these issues on the ground in workplaces and through policy action.
Climate, Society and Environment Research Centre (C-SERC)
Too Hot To Work is a part of the Climate, Society and Environment Research Centre (C-SERC) at UTS. In a world where rapidly changing climate and ecosystems are driving momentous social, political and economic change, C-SERC researchers contribute to understanding and shaping transformations in the way societies interact with energy, technology and the living environment.
Based in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, the Centre unites researchers from the disciplines of sociology, political economy, geography, history, science and technology studies, and communications. This unique combination of critical social science expertise allows us to advance knowledge and define challenging new agendas in climate, society and environment research that contribute to the mission of UTS as a public university of technology to sustain a positive, viable future and ensure a just and equitable society.