The Tories introduced the 50% strike ballot threshold to make industrial action harder. MATT WRACK argues that a Labour government has no justification for leaving it on the statute book
For Peggy Frank, a Los Angeles letter carrier, any federal or California safety rule ordering her employer and all other firms to protect workers from the hazards of excess heat didn’t work.
Frank, aged 63, collapsed and died from California’s monstrously high heat while delivering the mail in Woodland Hills, a section of Los Angeles, in mid-July. The temperature in that particular neighbourhood the day she died was 41.6°C (107°F).
Frank isn’t the only worker, old, young, or in between, to succumb to the dangers of the heat that has prostrated much of the country this year or in years past. She’s just the latest one.
Unions and climate activists pressure government to consider legislation for maximum working temperature
Extreme heat is now one of the defining public health challenges of a warming world, explains Prof IAN WILLIAMS
On the eve of the 157th Trades Union Congress, MICK WHELAN, general secretary of Aslef, the train drivers’ union, celebrates victory in his campaign to get dignity for drivers at work


