Everyday climate disasters: Breaking through by prioritizing workers’ bodies and lives (Sept. 2025)

Sook-kyun Lee, Activist

Korea Institute of Labor Safety and Health

Translated by Michelle Jang

2025

Heat waves soaring past 35°C are no longer surprising. Record-breaking temperatures and humidity have become a daily occurrence, and with no monsoon season in sight, even a mention of rain in the forecast now raises fears of sudden, localized downpours. Unpredictable rainstorms, wildfires, cold snaps, and intensifying heat waves are no longer rare events—they are daily reminders that the climate crisis is here.

So far this year, 4,119 cases of heat-related illness have been reported, with 27 deaths—an alarming surge compared to the 3,704 cases during the same period last year. In this searing heat, the lives and safety of workers and the public are left dangerously exposed.

Beyond heat waves and cold snaps: a broader view is needed

Currently, the Ministry of Employment and Labor and the Korea Occupational Safety and Health Agency (KOSHA) provide separate guidelines for responding to typhoons, heavy rainfall, and heat waves. These guidelines commonly recommend suspending work when risk levels exceed a certain threshold. Representative examples include:

“Suspend tower crane operations when wind speeds exceed 10 meters per second” (Safety and Health Guidelines for Construction Sites During the Rainy Season), and

“Check whether work suspension measures are in place according to weather advisories during typhoons or other natural disasters, and establish and communicate emergency evacuation plans to workers” (Key Emergency Evacuation Rules for Typhoons, Torrential Rains, and Other Natural Disasters).

However, these remain only ‘guidelines’—they lack enforceability and fail to adequately protect workers from harm.

Meanwhile, the infringement of workers’ health rights due to heat waves has emerged as a pressing social issue. In response, the Ministry of Employment and Labor announced revisions to the Occupational Safety and Health Act and its regulations aimed at protecting workers’ health during extreme heat.

Although the process was initially delayed due to a review by the Regulatory Reform Committee, the revised ‘Regulations on Occupational Safety and Health Standards’, which took effect on July 17, 2025, include several key provisions: requiring at least 20 minutes of rest every two hours when working in environments where the perceived temperature is 33°C or higher; suspending operations where heat-related illness (or suspected illness) has occurred, including all similar work activities; and inspecting whether preventive measures—such as operating cooling systems and providing rest periods—are being properly implemented. Any deficiencies must be promptly corrected.

However, heat waves and cold spells are merely dramatic symptoms of the broader climate crisis. Narrowly framing climate-related worker health policies as heat illness prevention measures fails to address the fundamental need to assess the diverse occupational health and safety challenges across different industries.

For instance, the perceived temperature experienced by on-site workers is not determined solely by the ambient workplace temperature. The UK’s Health and Safety Executive (HSE) provides a heat stress risk assessment checklist that takes into account multiple factors, including air temperature, radiant heat, ventilation, humidity, work clothing, physical workload, and personal protective equipment. These factors are evaluated through a scoring system to assess overall risk.

Taking these diverse factors into account also highlights the importance of allowing workers to stop and rest in hazardous conditions, rather than applying a one-size-fits-all standard like temperature across vastly different work environments.

Climate disaster measures that shift risks onto workers

#1 In the summer of 2023, Sungkonghoe University shut down its campus for two weeks under the pretext of an “Eco Week,” during which air conditioning was turned off. However, air conditioning was actually run in empty classrooms to prevent mold, and the so-called “Eco Week” served mainly as a cost-cutting measure to reduce janitors’ and staff wages. That month, janitors earned only 1.1 million won (~USD$784).

In 2024, Sungkonghoe University again imposed “Eco Week” for one week. Perhaps in response to criticism over unilateral wage cuts and increased workloads, the university hired part-time workers that year. Nevertheless, janitors were still forced to endure heavier workloads and suffered a wage reduction of about 500,000 won (~USD$356) due to being unable to come to work.

#2 Baedal Minjok and Coupang Eats entice delivery workers to risk their lives by offering extra incentives such as “180,000 won (~USD$128) for completing 200 deliveries within 96 hours” and “300,000 won (~USD$214) for completing 260 deliveries within 117 hours.” Lee Sang-jin, head of the Busan branch of the Riders Union, expressed outrage: “Delivery platforms demand more deliveries from workers based on lowered base fees, refusing to accept even the slightest loss, all in pursuit of greater profits. Workers have no choice but to take on these dangerous tasks that put their lives at risk just to make a living.”

Despite the extreme heat, 16 delivery workers have already died on the road this year alone, victims of intense competition and the relentless race to meet performance targets.

#3 There are around 70 Coupang logistics centers across the country, but only 10–15% of them have heating and cooling systems installed. This is alarming enough, but even more problematic is the rigid enforcement of the government’s heatwave response rule based on a “feels like” temperature of 33 degrees Celsius.

Even in relatively small logistics centers, work areas are subdivided and thermometers installed, yet workers are sometimes denied break times in certain sections simply because the temperature there is 0.2 degrees lower than 33 degrees Celsius, despite being part of the same workspace. In some centers, air conditioners intended to cool workers have been pointed at the thermometers instead.

Because each workplace varies in industry, job type, size, and environment, the risks workers face also differ. However, this should never be an excuse for employers to evade their responsibilities. On the contrary, it is essential for businesses to manage factors such as temperature and humidity in real time, tailored to the specific characteristics of each workplace, and to establish their own regulations to prevent heat-related illnesses. For this reason, the empowerment and control exerted by on-site workers are critically important.

“Right to stop work”: Using labor control to halt the climate crisis and respond to climate disasters

We now live in an era of climate disasters, worsened by capitalism, that has become a daily reality yet grows increasingly unpredictable. To prevent worker ill-health, it is essential to secure workers’ rights to control their labor process and to work at a sustainable, healthy pace. The right to stop work must become normalized so that workers can respond immediately to hazardous situations caused by climate disasters.

The right to stop work itself serves as a foundation for strengthening worker democracy in the workplace. In particular, the authority to decide production volume and methods has historically been seen as the exclusive prerogative of capital. The exercise of workers’ right to stop work, which challenges this authority, offers a glimpse of the possibility for public control over carbon-intensive industries.

Research on the impact of reduced working hours and “economic democracy” achieved through labor movements suggests that collective worker participation in decisions affecting their livelihoods and the future of companies—including broad market regulation, democratic control of monetary flows, work and vacation schedules, work pace, hiring and firing, work distribution, technologies and tools used, product quality and quantity, profit sharing, and investment decisions—can lead to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

A broader understanding of the “right to stop work” is needed—one that includes the preventive control of workplace hazards, including extreme climate disasters, and serves as a means to align workplace standards with workers’ bodies and lives rather than with profit. Workers have strengthened workplace democracy through collective struggles for musculoskeletal injury compensation and have fought against increased labor intensity and restructuring. Likewise, by advancing the struggle to secure the right to stop work, we must expand workplace democracy and develop movements in more workplaces that determine production methods and pace based on workers’ bodies and lives. This is both the key to halting the climate crisis and the only viable path toward sustainable communities in the era of climate change.

Ultimately, this is a question of “Who in society will produce what, how much, and by what means?” Establishing a production system that prioritizes workers’ bodies and lives over profit means fundamentally reorganizing society’s timetable according to social needs. The ones who can and must reshape this timetable are none other than the workers on the ground. Workers already have the capacity and power to thoroughly discuss and decide on issues such as: “What needs should be prioritized for the entire community? In which sectors should surplus resources be invested first? And if there is a conflict between fulfilling human needs and preserving the ecological environment, how should it be resolved?” — along with the various political views and currents surrounding the planning and execution of economic policies.

For this vast potential to be fully realized, collective action by workers and the accumulation of their experiences are essential. Let us start by meeting and exchanging ideas with workers of diverse backgrounds and perspectives, and together, seek a path toward realizing climate justice and the workers’ right to health.