“A huge amount of work to be done”: How are workers in Melbourne’s east fighting for better working conditions during heatwaves?

United Workers Union members have had to lose hours or be sent home early due to heat-related illnesses, with an uptick in reports over the past six years.

Matthew Sims
December 12, 2025

As the temperature warms up, it can be easy for people working in air-conditioned offices to forget about the negative impacts of heat.

However, for a number of workers across industries like hospitality, cleaning and health services, exposure to extreme heat and the risk of heat-related illnesses is continuing to increase and become more intense.

Fighting for safer workplaces: Workers are often held solely responsible for remaining safe at work during periods of extreme heat, but a number of unions have recently been calling for more national standards.

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As library organisations broaden their services and heatwaves become more common, the community hubs are beginning to plan ahead.

Work to be done: The United Workers Union (UWU) is a national organisation, advocating for better workplace rights for more than 150,000 blue-collar employees across more than 45 industries.

UWU allied industries executive director, Godfrey Moase, said the union has some recent wins under its belt, such as mandating paid breaks during periods of extreme heat and plans to minimise heat impacts on workers.

“There is a huge amount of work to be done in certain industries to implement these kinds of solutions and address the very real impacts of climate change on our members,” Moase told the Eastern Melburnian. “School cleaning, security and anywhere where a significant number of work hours are spent outside or in un-airconditioned work sites are other areas where we believe significant improvements can be made.

Other advocacy efforts for the UWU include more clauses related to when workers could stop work due to high temperatures, paid breaks during periods of extreme heat and universal paid disaster leave.

Why is extreme heat dangerous? In August, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) published a joint report and guidance highlighting the growing global health challenges posed by extreme heat on workers.

The report’s findings included worker productivity dropping by two to three percent for every degree above 20 degrees Celsius.

Australia’s National Climate Risk Assessment report, released earlier in the year, detailed how extreme heat would escalate health risks, such as dehydration, neurological disorders and heat stroke, the latter of which can be fatal within a few hours if not treated.

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The National Climate Risk Assessment report highlighted increasing extreme heat and bushfire risk would escalate national health dangers.

🔥How hot is Australia getting? According to the Bureau of Meteorology, the last financial year was officially Australia’s warmest on record, with the national average temperature 1.68 degrees Celsius above the 1961-1990 average.

According to the National Climate Risk Assessment, the number of extreme heat days would increase from four to 18 days per year under a 3°C warming scenario, leading to a 250 percent increase in heat-related mortality.

What standards are there? The Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union’s (CMFEU) policy states employees must let workers stop work and leave the site if the temperature reaches or exceeds 35 degrees Celsius.

While certain enterprise agreements specify heat-related standards, there is no single work health and safety standard.