Yahoo Finance Tradies to walk off the job when mercury hits 28C under divisive policy
Construction workers in Brisbane could be eligible for an extra two weeks off, following the uptake of a union’s hot weather policy.
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The Construction Forestry Maritime Mining and Energy Union’s (CFMMEU) policy allowing workers to walk off the job when temperatures hit 28C and humidity hits 75 per cent has been accepted by 140 commercial contractors and subcontractors across southeast Queensland, including the major Queen’s Wharf project in Brisbane.
The Fair Work Commission has also approved the agreement.
However, builders’ industry group, Master Builders has warned that the policy is a “health and safety nightmare”, reported The Australian, arguing that with Queensland’s weather, no work would get done.
In the last year, there were 13 days when those particular weather conditions occurred.
“If you applied this provision outside of southeast Queensland, it’s likely that no construction work would get done in a year as Queensland is by nature, hot and humid. If you applied this provision to Darwin in the NT, you wouldn’t work one day in a year,” Master Builders Queensland chief executive Grant Calvin said.
“When we questioned the logic of limiting this provision to southeast Queensland if it was a genuine health and safety issue, the answer we were given was ‘the workers outside southeast Queensland are more used to the higher temperatures and humidity, therefore they are at less risk as they know how to manage it’.”
Under the new rules, workers would be told about the hot weather on the day prior, with work also modified to include extra rest breaks, cold drinking water, coolers and putting on more staff.
But when the conditions are met for more than three hours after the beginning of the shift, “there will be an orderly cessation of work and preparations for safe completion of critical tasks currently underway … or modifications to the workload”.
Across the country, construction work stops when the temperature hits 35C, regardless of humidity levels.
The policy comes as Australia swelters under increasingly long and frequent heatwaves, with hot days doubling over the last 50 years.
The number of heatwaves is also expected to increase.
According to a study published in the Advancing Earth and Space Science last year, in order to offset the effects of heat, tradies would be required to start work “well before dawn”.
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