Climate’s labour costs

It took friend and colleague, climate change guru Steve Maximay, to remind me last week of an overdue commitment to address the impact of changing climatic conditions on the world of work in the Caribbean. I am coming to what led to this shortly. Stay with me.

This is no new area of global concern. The International Labour Organization (ILO) and others have been at this for many years now.

In 2004/2005 (20 years ago!) I worked with the Association of Caribbean MediaWorkers (ACM) and what was then the Caricom Mainstreaming Adaptation to Climate Change (MACC) project on a climate change handbook for Caribbean journalists - arguably the first of its kind anywhere. Pacific media colleagues even wanted one of their own! Credit T&T communication guy, Tony Deyal, for spawning the idea.

Even then, the subject of the changing world of work was coming up as experts concluded that “adaptation” to inevitable change had to be at the forefront of the numerous survival strategies of small vulnerable countries.

The ILO has also looked, in successive published studies, at the direct and indirect consequences of a phenomenon whose human contributions have been almost universally recognised by the scientific community.

In a follow-up to our first publication, with support from UNESCO in 2020, Maximay, Dr Dale Rankine and I co-authored ‘Reporting the Climate Crisis, A handbook for Caribbean journalists.’ Some readers thought “crisis” was an inappropriate descriptor and perhaps remain entitled to their uninformed view.

Authors of the UK Guardian’s Style Guide were however clear, and in 2019 mandated internal employment of “climate crisis” and “climate emergency” as preferred terms to describe the unfolding situation.

Now, back to Steve and our journey through hilly St Joseph last week. We came across the diligent postal worker who services my area (and who deserves a special award for her dedication). There she was - seated on a culvert, mid-morning, with her head down, perspiration dotting the hot pitch. “Heat,” she muttered. “Heat.” She declined our offer of a lift.

“You know,” Steve suggested, “this is why climate change and how people work must be urgently put on the agenda. Things will get worse.” We both understood the symbolism of that simple, brief encounter.

In April there was an ILO press release which described climate change as offering up a “cocktail” of serious health hazards with the potential to affect up to 70 percent of the world’s working population.

It might well be that Joint Trade Union Movement (JTUM), the National Trade Union Centre (NATUC), and non-aligned member unions have found time in their busy schedules to discuss this matter. But I have not seen the press releases. Nobody has been making the media rounds. Labour Day came and went and the only heat I heard about was a threat of rhetorical “fire” in Fyzabad.

Last year, almost to the day, and hosted by Dr André Vincent Henry, Director of the Cipriani College of Labour and Co-operative Studies, Caribbean labour leaders and activists looked at these precise issues at a Caribbean World of Work Forum. Whatever happened to the agenda set there?

Revised labour standards are clearly needed as a buffer against the onslaught of uneven climate impacts across regions, countries, and sectors. Even accompanying measures to address this come with costly price tags.

The imperative of a “just transition” to low-carbon realities also has vast implications for workers. Global dynamics affected by the drive to achieve emission targets are umbilically linked to the future of workers and the communities in which they live and perform their duties.

In our region, there are already recognisable impacts on the incidence of heat-related and respiratory illnesses – developments hopefully being recorded and researched by public health agencies in T&T. A few months ago, I was a part of a journalistic exercise which looked at the rising incidence of climate-related illnesses among the elderly of Barbados.

In that instance, we noted a sad paucity of official data but abundant anecdotal information on growing hospital admissions for the treatment of patients experiencing higher temperatures and protracted exposure to the polluting effects of Saharan Dust.

There are also growing concerns related to disease-carrying vectors that thrive on the combined effects of unseasonal and more intense weather events. Have you wondered about the intensity of this year’s dengue outbreak and associated economic costs including those occasioned by workplace disruptions?

How are our unions contributing to such a discussion? Should they not be leading the way? Where are they? Where is this frontline of defence against climate’s rising labour costs?