Dave Carew was on vacation. But before that, he had some things to do.
It was a Thursday, two days before Independence Day, and Carew, who has worked for UPS for 13 years, was setting up an information booth with brochures and thermometers outside the company’s customer center in the north Bronx. His goal was to catch employees coming and going for their shifts and educate them on how to stay safe when it’s brutally hot outside.
The heat was already intensifying, with New York City weather forecasts predicting temperatures near 100 degrees Fahrenheit over the weekend. Wearing bright blue sunglasses and standing in the shade, Carew spoke to his fellow workers, reminding them of their right to paid breaks even in the heat.
“Heat safety is no joke,” he said the next day. Extreme heat protection has long been a concern for outdoor workers, and unions representing delivery drivers, farm workers and construction workers have called for additional safety measures in recent years. In 2023, UPS employees won a labor contract that included a clause requiring the company to install air conditioning in new cars starting the following year. Although the safety measures were an important achievement, Carew said there were still risks to the work. In the back of delivery trucks, where packages are stored, temperatures can still reach dangerous levels on very hot days.
“I’ve seen numbers close to 150 degrees Fahrenheit,” he said. “If you have 400 packages and you’re looking for one envelope, it can quickly become dangerous.”
Carew takes his role as a labor organizer seriously. Part of the reason is that there are currently no federal regulations that protect U.S. workers from the effects of on-the-job exposure to extreme heat. The Biden administration proposed draft federal heating regulations two years ago, but the already long process to codify such rules was further delayed under the Trump administration. As summer temperatures continue to rise due to climate change, states and local governments are creating their own heat safety standards for workers.
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Labor organizations also play an important role in workplace protection. Carew said the Teamsters, the union representing UPS employees, began “aggressively” enforcing contract protections last year. Members held safety meetings in parking lots, hosted webinars, and distributed toolkits. The efforts seem to be paying off, as last summer was the first in which heat-related deaths were not widely reported at UPS.
In New York City, labor rights groups and city officials are working closely to protect vulnerable New Yorkers from extreme heat. Last month, Mayor Zoran Mamdani signed an executive order announcing the first initiative to protect outdoor workers from heat stroke. Shortly after, just days before a heat wave hit the region, Mamdani shared another all-hands plan to prepare for the high temperatures on Independence Day. The city has deployed hundreds of cooling centers and more than a dozen vans carrying staff to conduct health screenings during the heatwave. We also worked with organizations like the Street Vendor Project to promote the use of pop-up cooling stations for outdoor workers.
This will likely not be the only heat event this summer, so the need for this type of direct community support will continue.
“We show them the QR code” and a map of the location of the cooling center, and “the vendors get really excited. They pull out their phones and want to know,” said Andrew Konkachen, program manager for the street vendor project.
Because of the outdoor, sometimes informal nature of their work, street vendors in New York City face unique challenges in cooling down in the summer heat. Spencer Pratt/Getty Images
The Street Vendor Project represents more than 3,000 food and merchandise vendors across New York City and has been in contact with various city agencies regarding heat safety issues for more than a year. And as part of an executive order signed last month to protect outdoor workers from heat stress, city health and emergency management officials are required to roll out a multilingual heat safety messaging campaign “as soon as possible” this year.
Given the wide variety of languages used by street vendors, delivery drivers, construction workers, and other outdoor workers, a focus on language access is critical. These professions often attract immigrants, many of whom may feel confident reading or speaking languages other than English. For example, Kongkachen said that within the Street Vendor Project membership alone, the main languages spoken in addition to English are Spanish, Arabic, Bangla, French and Mandarin.
The challenges of developing local policies to protect workers extend beyond overcoming language barriers and distributing QR codes. Paid breaks and access to shade and water are among the best practices to protect workers from extreme heat. However, the nature of outdoor work can make such basic, common sense solutions difficult. For example, a street vendor may be self-employed and, if operating without all the necessary licenses and permits, may be technically operating in the informal economy. For example, you may be worried that your food cart or supplies will be stolen if you leave your station to go to a cooling station or take a break in the shade, or you may need to have a neighbor keep an eye on your belongings.
For app-based delivery workers, taking breaks to cool down can mean lost wages. Delivery apps could penalize bike messengers who slow down to stay hydrated or safe in the heat for taking too long to complete orders.
The heat wave has made an already demanding outdoor job even more complicated. Labor advocates understand that this is an unfortunate reality for many people trying to make a living on a warming planet.
“Hot weather is no longer an occasional emergency,” said Ligia Gualpa, executive director of the Workers’ Justice Project, a New York City worker center. “This is becoming a feature of New York summers, and our response must evolve accordingly.”
Gualpa added that the organization is “grateful” for Mayor Mamdani’s executive order to protect outdoor workers. (The Workers’ Justice Project helps run Los Deliveristas Unidos, a union of app-based bike couriers.) She called the effort “an important step in recognizing that the people who continue to ride in New York in extreme weather conditions deserve protection.”
New York City Deputy Mayor for Economic Justice Julie Hsu told Grist that she has heard from workers expressing similar concerns. “I met with city hall workers and they all said the same thing: You have to meet your quota and you can’t stop for a drink of water. You can’t get into the shade during your shift, much less get into the cooling facility. They know what it’s like to pass out, feel dizzy, exhausted (and) end up in the hospital,” Su said. She added that the new executive order “treats this as a public health emergency.”
“It’s important for the city to meet vendors where they are,” Konkachen said. He added that he has recently heard from members that cooling stations are not always in the “right places.” In one case, cooling stations were installed on a street that had been temporarily closed to vehicle traffic and turned into a pedestrian-only public space, but not near areas where street vendors congregated. The city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, which expanded pop-up cooling stations during the recent heat wave, did not respond to a request for comment.
Efforts to connect vulnerable workers to existing resources continue even as temperatures cool slightly in New York City this week. “Because this summer is definitely going to be hotter,” Konkachen said.
