The webinar was moderated by Derek Johnstone, Special Assistant to the National President of the United Food and Commercial Workers of Canada (UFCW Canada).

Panelists included:

Halshka Graczyk, researcher and technical expert on occupational health and safety at the International Labor Organization (ILO), who presented a report entitled “Ensuring safety and health at work in a changing climate”.

Baldemar Velásquez, founder of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) and president of that federation’s Farm Labor Organizing Committee.

Jyoti Macwan, Secretary-General of India’s Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), the largest central union of women workers of that country’s informal economy, with a membership of more than 3.2 million poor and self-employed women workers from 18 Indian states.

Mopholosi Morokong, Occupational Health and Safety Officer at IUF Africa.

Fabrizio De Pascale, President of the Agriculture Sector of the European Federation of Food, Agriculture and Tourism Trade Unions (EFFAT).

Roberto Ruiz, occupational health doctor and Director of the Occupational Health and Safety Department of the IUF Latin American Regional Office, myself, and Ivan Ivanov, Political Secretary of the EFFAT’s Agriculture Sector.

The seminar was held via Zoom, with nearly all panelists making relevant technical contributions regarding the diagnosis of the damage caused by extreme heat at work and suggestions on measures that could be implemented to mitigate it.

Doctor Roberto Ruiz gave an overview of the risks faced by workers who are exposed to heat in different environments and the health implications of that exposure. He described the research that is being conducted at the Observatory of Health and Work in Agribusiness (Obagro)¹ with the participation of the IUF Regional Office, and highlighted the opportunity that the upcoming COP 30 meeting, to be held on November 10-21 in Belém do Pará, Brazil, represents for organized workers.

The account by SEWA Deputy Secretary-General Mansi Shah, from India, was particularly moving, as she described in detail how rising extreme heat driven by climate change is affecting self-employed women who work either at home, in their vegetable gardens, or in street fairs offering their wares.

Mansi Shahinformed that a survey conducted among 5,000SEWAmembers revealed that 90 percent of respondents reported a 50 percent drop in their income during heat waves, and that 93 percent of respondents said they had suffered some impact on their health as a result of the heat, citing dehydration, skin allergies, high blood pressure, urinary tract infections, and other health problems.

According to Mansi Shah, 60 percent of the women surveyed suffer food insecurity, as they can only eat once a day due to their scarce resources, and 78 percent reported that they lacked access to stable power sources.

It is important to understand, Mansi added, how extreme weather events affect women’s dignity and respect toward them, given that due to their lack of social protection and low income they are often forced to turn to loan sharks who take advantage of them by imposing exorbitant interest rates, but also through sexual exploitation, even demanding sexual favors from them in front of their children and relatives.

Many women who work in construction or as street vendors have no access to safe drinking water because there no proper public sanitation facilities.

In an effort to address these challenges, SEWA implements various responses that, while they do help its members, they are not enough to solve the underlying root problems, which are climate change and the absence of government policies to protect the rights of women workers.

Mansi thus calls for a holistic approach to address the issue.