The oppressive and deadly heat striking the U.S. and many parts of the world has real-life consequences for workers' health and safety. It's a prime reason why United Parcel Service (UPS) workers are planning to strike starting August 1 if that company doesn't improve working conditions that have already caused injury and death from heat exposure going back years. From The Guardian's article:
"As a UPS delivery driver in Dallas, Texas, Seth Pacic is intimately familiar with the dangers of extreme heat. After a long day’s work through record-breaking temperatures in summer 2011, he found himself dry heaving in the parking lot, incapable of driving home until he spent an hour and a half in the air-conditioned office.
“'t was one of the worst feelings I’ve ever had in my entire life,' he said. 'I didn’t feel like I fully recovered for a couple of weeks.'
For some, the heat has had even more serious consequences. Last June, Pacic’s friend and coworker had a heat stroke while driving home from work; he is still recuperating, Pacic said. That same summer, 24-year-old UPS driver Esteban Chavez collapsed and died in California as temperatures soared into the high 90s; his family filed a wrongful death lawsuit and later settled with UPS. And the year before that, Jose Cruz Rodriguez Jr, 23, died of a heatstroke while driving a UPS truck in Waco, Texas." (our emphasis)
The Guardian's article details the stress that UPS workers are under in normal circumstances, aside from deadly heat they have to work in. If UPS workers do strike, it would be one of the largest single union strike in U.S. history, involving approximately 340,000 Teamsters Union members, causing significant problems for the delivery of goods via the parcel service. UPS has new delivery trucks with air conditioners and heat shields starting next year, but the workers was relief now.
The article notes in passing that the despicable, sociopathic MAGAt governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, eliminated Texas' municipalities' ability to order water and work breaks for laborers in June during the heat wave. This fits with his deliberately cruel policy toward immigrants crossing the Rio Grande, denying them water and pushing them back into the river. The Teamsters strike needs to succeed in order to send right-wing, anti-labor demagogues like Abbott a message that workers won't back off.
(photo: Frederic J. Brown—AFP/Getty Images)
