This second heatwave, even hotter and longer than the one in May, means that we have to yet again use our ingenuity and grit our teeth. With absolutely no preparation, schools and colleges have had to close. Baccalaureate schedules are being changed. Dozens of trains have been cancelled or have broken down halfway through their journey. Basically, everyone has to do the best they can!

It’s more than twenty years since the 2003 summer heatwave that killed around 15,000 people. The state swore “never again” and promised air-conditioning in schools and hospitals. But there are many heat-trap schools that have windows with no blinds and that can’t even be opened. And how many hospital rooms have neither ventilation nor air-conditioning?

The government tells us to be responsible for ourselves but is incapable of assuming its own responsibilities. And we certainly shouldn’t wait for it to protect workers because, even in this extreme situation, one thing is unchanging, we have to go to work no matter what!

The day in hell often begins on public transportation when we’re trapped on a bus, a train, an RER (local inner Paris trains), with no air-conditioning, where passengers fainting is more and more frequent. And at work it’s the same story.

Most factories are like ovens. Workshops are cramped and badly-ventilated. Working in a foundry, an industrial bakery, keeping up with grueling work schedules on an assembly line or lifting heavy weights while also wearing safety gear that is hot and bulky becomes a form of torture when temperatures can reach 105° F.

Construction sites are almost always exposed to heat and dust. The work doesn’t stop during heatwaves because the Code du Travail[1] doesn’t set a maximum temperature limit.

Even in offices, including those of major companies that boast of being at the forefront of technology, there is often no air-conditioning or ventilation. It’s even worse in restaurant kitchens and small shops where the heat is almost unbearable.

Such exposure to heat can kill. Directly – several dozen deaths are noted each year – and over time, by creating or aggravating heart or respiratory diseases.

When such danger exists, an employer’s only obligation is to supply cold water in sufficient quantity and to renew the air in the workspace – this is not done for millions of workers. Sometimes, working hours on construction sites are changed during heatwaves, sometimes extra breaks are given in the toughest workshops and most times, it comes after workers imposing it.

We’re told to drink, spend time in cool rooms, slow down. And this advice should apply everywhere…but why not at work where we wear ourselves out twice as fast?

An urgent measure would be to at least reduce the working day and lower production rates. If we wear ourselves out twice as fast, let’s work half as much and more slowly.

In workshops turned boiling pots, it’s time to wrest exceptional paid leave days from the bosses. They are always ready to ensure their own comfort and, if they can’t make sure that their workers are safe, they must assume the consequences.

Big business and the government worry about production and profits and everything functions around that. We’ll have to look after our own health and get organized to safeguard it.

The capitalist system is based on state negligence and corporate irresponsibility. Contrary to what we’re told, the state isn’t there to organize our interactions with one another, or to anticipate or invest in preparing the future. Its purpose is to ensure that all the necessary conditions are met for the bourgeoisie to accumulate ever greater profits.

That’s why all governments allow industrialists to do whatever they want – outdo one another in pollution and the emission of greenhouses gases and impose their absurd economic and social system on everyone. The headlong rush for ever-higher profits will soon mean we have to live with temperatures of 120-125° F. We can’t accept dying on the job for such a crazy social system!

Nathalie Arthaud