Not long ago, Guillermina ran into a coworker at her doctor’s office. The two women work together at a McDonald’s near San Jose, California. When Guillermina asked what her coworker was doing at the doctor, she responded that she’d been feeling ill, adding, “You know how hot it gets in the kitchen.”
Guillermina understood. She is the shift manager at McDonald’s, and has worked in fast food for 22 years. The air conditioning in her building is old, she said, and isn’t designed for the scorching summer temperatures they experience today. Last year, the employees went on strike after temperatures in the kitchen rose above 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
According to Guillermina, she and her coworkers — mostly women, mostly Spanish-speakers — often work through excessive heat, struggling with dizziness, headaches, and fatigue, to the point of vomiting.
She tried to comfort her coworker. Guillermina is a member of the California Fast Food Workers Union, a new effort by the Service Employees International Union, or SEIU, to organize low-wage, fast-food workers. She had invited her coworker to join the union many times before, but she’d always declined. At the doctor’s office, Guillermina took another chance at her pitch, but her coworker answered plainly: She and the other employees were scared.
In an interview in Spanish, Guillermina shared that she also fears retribution in the workplace for organizing. (Grist is only identifying Guillermina by her first name to protect her identity.) Twice she’d had her hours cut, and after she and her coworkers went on strike, her managers threatened her, saying that because of her, they were all going to be fired.
This month, SEIU held a series of actions with workers like Guillermina across California, to protest dangerous heat in fast food restaurants. In San Jose, workers at an El Pollo Loco location walked out on the job and went on a two-day strike after temperatures in the restaurant reached 90 degrees Fahrenheit. The union’s “Heat Week” is the latest in a new wave of labor organizing focused on how climate change impacts workers. But the reasonable fear that Guillermina and her coworkers face underscores the challenges of holding employers accountable for worker safety on a warming planet.
“I’ve been retaliated against,” said Guillermina, “and I’m not okay, physically or mentally, because of it.” After the strike, when her hours were cut, she fell behind on car payments and bills. Her husband, who suffers from diabetes and hearing problems, cannot work, and without her usual income, she couldn’t afford groceries. She later went to the hospital with signs of cardiac arrest. “But I’m not going to be quiet, and I’m not going to leave the union,” she said. “That’s the only place that cares about me knowing my rights.”
Heat is the deadliest weather event in the U.S. And for decades, the fight to protect the U.S. labor force from heat-related illness has focused on outdoor industries, like farming and construction. But increasingly, the labor movement, environmental justice advocates, and policymakers acknowledge that indoor workers are also vulnerable to the effects of extreme heat. It is common in the fast food industry, for example, for the lobbies and seating areas to be well air-conditioned — but there are many sources of heat in restaurant kitchens, making them extremely difficult to cool down.
Workers fighting to level these disparities intimately understand the connection between the heat stress they experience indoors and the grueling heat outside, said Yana Kalmyka, a labor organizer. Since 2023, Kalmyka has volunteered with the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, or EWOC, a project born out of the Covid pandemic to help workers organize in response to the unforeseen public health crisis. EWOC has been especially effective at organizing restaurant and fast-food workers.
Those workers “feel that the heat’s getting worse every year. They also know that if it’s really hot and their boss is pushing them to get out orders in 45 seconds, that the quickness they’re forced to move with is going to exacerbate their heat stress,” said Kalmyka, who previously helped organize Starbucks workers in Texas.
It isn’t just that restaurants, coffee shops, and fast-casual chains might lack adequate climate control — or that working next to a scalding-hot oven is physically exhausting. If workers are commuting to work during a heat wave, especially if they walk, bike, or rely on public transit, then they are often starting their shifts with some degree of heat exposure. Once they clock in, the conditions increase the chances of health complications.
“Unfortunately, this problem is only getting worse,” said Kalmyka, “because on the climate side, we’re not making the kinds of changes we need to be making as a society to prevent extreme heat from getting worse.”
In California, employers are now required to offer water breaks and rest areas for indoor workers when the temperature gets above 82 degrees Fahrenheit. However, a new report from the SEIU found that three out of five fast-food workers reported excessive heat in their restaurants, and nearly half experienced symptoms of heat-related illness.
Laura Stock, author of the foreword to the SEIU report, previously served on the Cal/OSHA Standards Board, which establishes the state’s workplace regulations. When the indoor heat rule was being developed, Stock said, workers’ testimonies, including those from fast-food and restaurant workers, demonstrated the need for stronger protections. “It was a tremendous victory to have this regulation passed,” said Stock. “But the only way it has any value is if it’s enforced.”
In this way, California serves as a kind of test case for the U.S., as the federal government considers a nationwide heat standard for outdoor and indoor workers. Last year, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the federal workplace safety agency, shared a draft text of a proposed rule aimed at shielding workers from heat stress and illness; it includes provisions that advocates have described as necessary and common-sense, such as employers providing access to drinking water and shade, as well as training employees on how to identify signs of heat-related illness. The agency appears to be moving forward with finalizing the rule, although experts worry the Trump administration might stifle the process. It’s in this context that SEIU is organizing, at a time when “it’s unclear whether the Trump administration is going to cancel or move ahead with Biden’s good, proposed heat standard,” said Steven Greenhouse, a former labor reporter for the New York Times.
The results of SEIU’s survey of fast-food workers suggest that, even in the best case scenario, well-written laws may be toothless without extensive outreach, education, and enforcement. This presents a problem in California, where Cal/OSHA suffers from staffing shortages.
But even if the law were followed perfectly, workers like Guillermina say current regulations, as well-intentioned as they may be, are insufficient when employers value profits over employee safety and comfort. For example, California’s indoor heat rule specifies that employers must provide workers with a cool place to rest when temperatures pass 82 degrees Fahrenheit, and encourage taking proactive breaks. But Guillermina says resting is often a lost cause at her McDonald’s, where the kitchen is staffed by two or three women at most. “If it’s rush hour, when the restaurant is at its busiest and orders keep coming in, even if the workers are dying of heat, do you think they can stop and take a break?” she said.
When indoor temperatures surpass 87 degrees Fahrenheit, California’s indoor heat rule does require businesses to slow the pace of production. Still, Guillermina says workers’ health is often an afterthought for bosses. “We’re just a number to them,” she said, “and when we make them money, it comes at great personal cost to our safety.” She says what would really help is if leadership fixed the air conditioning in their kitchen.
SEIU’s report found that four out of five fast-food workers reported problems with their restaurant air-conditioning, and half said management claimed it was “too expensive” to permanently repair these appliances.
If good laws are insufficient to protect workers, then the onus falls on advocacy groups to fight for change. “It’s very important to act collectively,” said Stock, adding, “your rights are often easier to protect if you’re working in a group.” Although Guillermina’s store didn’t participate in any Heat Week strikes, she hopes her coworkers can overcome their fear together to raise standards at work. “We have rights, the same as any other workers,” she said, “and we should know that.”
