Kmflett's Blog

Parts of England and Wales are experiencing near record hot temperatures- much of the rest of Western Europe is even hotter.

While there is legislation on a minimum working temperature (around 16C by 8am) there is nothing on a maximum temperature. The TUC and some unions have been pressing for this for some time (see petition below). Where workplaces are unionised, employers usually provides guidelines allowing flexibility of attendance, clothing etc. Elsewhere people may be expected to carry on working on what are likely to be unsafe conditions.

Things have improved but it remains the case that hot working conditions (even when the weather is not hot) have a long history.

In The Making of the English Working Class (1963) E P Thompson records from 1818 an address to the strike-bound public of Manchester from a Journeyman cotton spinner. He writes of mill workers, adults and children who are ‘locked up until night in rooms heated above the hottest days we have had this summer and allowed no time, except three quarters of an hour at dinner in the whole day’….

A lot done, a lot still to do..

Last summer 1,504 people died from heat-related causes in England alone, and there’s still no legal maximum temperature for UK workplaces. Can you sign this petition to help change that? the.organise.network/campaigns/ne…