Impact Plastics and How Climate Change Threatens Workers

At least six workers in a Tennessee plastics factory are dead or missing after managers allegedly told them not to evacuate despite urgent warnings of severe flash flooding. What does this tragedy say about the unique threat that workers face from climate change and related adverse weather events?Climate change is not a hoax, as some politicians continue to argue. It is very real as we witnessed most recently the past several days as a climate change-fueled hurricane wreaked havoc and death from Floridas far north as eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina. Hundreds are confirmed dead and many more are still missing.Hurricanes, floods, heat, fires and other severe weather phenomena have the potential of hitting everyone. Some — who may live on the coast or in a fire-prone areas — may be more at risk than city-dwellers, but Hurricane Helene has shown us that few locations are immune, even for people who thought they were protected because they lived in an inland city like Asheville or up in the mountains far from the hurricane-prone coasts.While anyone can be at risk from adverse weather events, workers bear an added element of risk because of the jobs they do and their lack of control in their workplaces. Must attention has been paid over the past few years to the growing number of worker illnesses and deaths from heat exposure — and the federal government as well as a growing number of cities and states are slowly taking action to protect workers. (At the same time, some states — like Texas and Florida — are heading the other direction — making it more difficult for localities to protect workers from the effects of high heat.) Many of the jobs most at risk, for example agriculture and construction, have large numbers of immigrant workers who may not feel protected complaining to OSHA or other authorities about unsafe working conditions

But the threat to workers is not just from the elements. It’s not just from Mother Nature, however climate-altered she has become. Worker risk is also a function of workers’ power in the workplace — or lack thereof. Where they work, the conditions they work under and their ability to protect themselves against obvious threats make workers more vulnerable than average citizens to the risks posed by climate change.

https://www.dcreport.org/2024/10/06/impact-plastics-and-how-climate-change-threatens-workers/