Hot workers want animal rights

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As global warming hit workplaces again this summer, trade union members protested outside the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) to demand a maximum temperature for all workplaces.

Members of the Musicians' Union, the food workers' union BFAWU, National Union of Journalists, Iron and Steel Trades Confederation and the General Federation of Trades Unions (GFTU) gathered to say that the long-established legal minimum temperature must be matched by a maximum. Health problems with working in heat are well recognised, said demonstrators, and farm animals have better legal protection against hot conditions than workers.

While a Musicians Union band serenaded the HSE with relevant tunes, Roger Sutton of the GFTU pointed to the lead taken by the TUC two years ago. The HSE had promised to look at the problem but nothing had happened since.

'This problem comes every summer,' said Roger Sutton. 'All we want to do is set a level above which it is clearly risky to work. Surely not too much to ask in the technological world of the 21^st century?'

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