#TooHotToWork: Trade Unions Demand Binding EU Rules on Workplace Heat Protection

#TooHotToWork: Trade Unions Demand Binding EU Rules on Workplace Heat Protection

Jun 25, 2026 | In the spotlight, News & Media, Press release

As this week's heatwave hits, EFFAT EPSU EFBWW present their Model Directive, warning that heat is a daily occupational hazard, not a one-off summer event.

Brussels, 25 June 2026 | As temperatures rise across Europe, the European Federation of Food, Agriculture and Tourism Trade Unions (EFFAT), the European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU), the European Federation of Building and Woodworkers (EFBWW), urge the European Commission to bring forward binding EU legislation on Heat at Work as part of the upcoming Quality Jobs Act. The call is based on a newly unveiled report and a Model Directive, written with the analytical support of the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI), with the aim of protecting workers from increasing heat exposure in the workplace.

Today's conference, "Protecting Workers Against Occupational Heat: Impacts and Solutions" brings together researchers, trade unionists, policymakers, and workers to examine the growing risks posed by heat exposure and extreme weather in the workplace, as well as the legal tools needed to address them.

Not just a heatwave, but a daily hazard
According to research carried out by the ETUI, heat exposure at work is no longer an occasional summer hazard: it is a persistent and escalating occupational risk across Europe.

Striking figures:

• 130 million workers in Europe are exposed to workplace heat stress every year, with an estimated 277,000 injuries and 230 deaths linked to it annually.
• Around 9 in 10 cases of worker heat exposure, and 8 in 10 heat-related injuries, occur on ordinary hot working days, not during officially declared heatwaves.
• The risk is not confined to outdoor sectors such as construction and farming; it is increasingly affecting warehouse employees, kitchen and hospitality staff, care workers, and others working indoors without proper ventilation.
• Alongside Southern Europe, heat-related dangers are increasing in Central and Northern Europe, where workplaces and labour laws were not originally designed to handle prolonged periods of high temperatures.

Yet, EU occupational safety and health law addresses heat only indirectly. There are no harmonised EU-wide exposure limits, and no enforceable minimum standards to adequately protect workers from heat-related risks.

Protection today depends on a patchy mix of national rules, and, too often, on employers' goodwill.

What's at stake
Without binding rules, the workers least able to protect themselves are the most precarious ones. Seasonal, migrant, platform, and subcontracted workers are frequently those most in need, yet often unable to refuse unsafe work, take paid breaks, or demand water and shade.

Heat is already reducing workers' incomes through lost working hours, cancelled shifts, and unpaid breaks. At the same time, it is imposing growing costs on the wider European economy, as heat-related productivity losses are projected to increase significantly by 2030 across nearly all regions of Europe.

The trade unions' demands

Through the EFFAT EPSU EFBWW Model Directive, trade unions have identified clear elements that should form the basis of binding EU legislation on occupational heat:

• Binding maximum working temperatures and exposure limits, based on recognised scientific metrics (such as the Wet Bulb Globe Temperature, WBGT), above which work must be adjusted or suspended;
• Mandatory heat risk assessments, integrated into employers' occupational health and safety obligations;
• Enforceable rest and work-cycle arrangements, including paid breaks, access to shade, water and cooling, and adjusted working hours during high heat.
• Specific protection for the most exposed sectors and groups, including construction, agriculture, transport, waste, and hospitality workers, and those in poorly cooled indoor environments, with particular attention to workers in precarious employment.
• Income and job security safeguards, ensuring that prevention measures such as rescheduling, reduced pace, or work stoppages do not cost workers their pay.
• Worker participation, through safety representatives and collective bargaining, in designing and enforcing heat protection measures at workplace level.

EFFAT Secretary General, Enrico Somaglia:
Climate change is here and is profoundly affecting the world of work, threatening jobs and incomes in our sectors. It demands immediate action, through both mitigation and adaptation strategies. Heat-related diseases or even fatalities are not isolated tragedies; they are the predictable result of leaving workers without binding protection. We can't accept another summer of preventable heat-related accidents. We can't accept another summer where legislators come with too little, too late. A binding EU directive on occupational heat is essential to keep workers safe.

EFBWW Secretary General Tom Deleu:
Extreme weather is now a workplace reality across Europe. Heatwaves, cold spells and storms are not inconveniences for workers, but occupational hazards. Climate change is one of the defining challenges of our time, but workers are still being sent into increasingly extreme weather conditions without clear and enforceable protections. If climate adaptation is serious, it must include the workplace.

EPSU Secretary General Jan Willem Goudriaan:
Many public service workers are working outdoors. They are exposed to extreme climate events such as heatwaves to allow essential services and emergency services to function such as waste workers, municipal employees in gardens, firefighters, or homecare workers moving between patients. They need specific protection in terms of legislation and enforcement. The extreme heat this week in several EU countries is proof we need this framework. Workers and their trade unions need to be involved

The ask
On the basis of the EFFAT, EPSU, and EFBWW Model Directive unveiled today, the unions call on the European Commission to use the text as the basis for a legislative proposal on occupational heat in the framework of the upcoming Quality Jobs Act, and to bring it forward without delay so that workers are protected before, not after, the next deadly heatwave.

#TooHotToWork

Ends
Media contacts:EFFAT
Maddalena Colombi
[email protected]
+32 488 337 409

EFBWW
Mick Madsen
[email protected]
+32 473 13 43 49

EPSU
Pablo Sánchez Centellas
[email protected]
+32 474 62 66 33