Extreme heat costing Indian workers billions in lost wages

Key points

• IIED and partners surveyed 538 informal worker households in three Indian cities: Ajmer, Delhi and Agra. Most people (86%) had migrated to the city to find work.
• Those in outdoor industries (construction, road laying, brickmaking) lost about 24 days’ work a year due to heat, costing them the equivalent of $151 – nearly a tenth of their annual earnings. Indoor workers (food packaging, garment manufacturing, stonemasonry) lost roughly 15 days and $89. Indoor employees in particular reported being unable to change their working patterns to avoid high heat, due to their bosses’ demands.
• Ending a long shift often gave little respite. Survey respondents rated the heat they experienced at home during peak summer time as at least four on a five-point scale.
• Mental health impacts of high heat included low mood, poor concentration, sleep problems and irritability. People said prolonged exposure caused them to make mistakes at work.
• After consulting with doctors, IIED asked workers about symptoms of acute kidney injury, a condition associated with strenuous effort and dehydration. Nearly a fifth (18.7%) reported such symptoms. Repeated injury can lead to chronic kidney disease.
• Extrapolating its findings to produce national-level estimates, this study suggests chronic kidney disease may lead to some 4.5 billion lost workdays annually, or $23 billion in lost wages – equating to 0.58% of India’s GDP. About 11 billion workdays, or $55 billion in wages, are thought to be lost to heat-related productivity decline separate from kidney problems (equivalent to 1.41% of GDP).

Ritu Bharadwaj, IIED’s director of climate resilience, finance and loss and damage, said: “Some of the stories we heard from workers about their experiences of extreme heat were genuinely horrifying.

“A machine operator told us he collapsed during a 12-hour shift with no shade or cool water provided, and his colleagues had to get him to hospital themselves. His boss docked his wages.

“Another person said she’d worked for the same clothes factory for a decade and that in that time, no changes at all had been made to mitigate heat exposure. She has to operate in a small, poorly ventilated room alongside steam presses that make it feel like a ‘furnace’.

“These are Victorian-era working conditions and they’re completely unacceptable in the 21st century.

“Yet what we heard about people’s homes might have been even worse. It was depressingly common to find multiple people sharing a single-room dwelling without a working toilet, often lacking a fan and with only one window. This is what migrant workers have to endure just to make a living.

“Imagine how India’s economy would boom if decent housing and workplace protections were made a priority. Workers would have more cash in their pockets to circulate back into goods and services, and the state could concentrate on more productive things than providing hospital treatment for easily avoidable heat stress.”

Researchers developed a number of recommendations for government that could help alleviate the heat burden. They could all work through existing systems.

For example, specific wet bulb temperature thresholds for indoor and outdoor workplaces could be the signal that activates both income support and workplace protections.

India’s Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code should also be updated with enforceable heat limits, the study concluded.

With IIED’s research showing workers cannot get away from dangerous heat even at home, investments in better construction, cooling and sanitation – particularly in informal settlements – may well pay for themselves in the long run.