Fix your work schedules looking at the clock instead of the thermometer

I leave home at 4:00 p.m. and, armed with value, I go to pick up the car from the mechanic. It has ended with him and Previous reviews They have the collapsed workshop, so he asked me to pick it up as soon as possible. On the portal, I cross a neighbor who enters the stifled street, with his forehead peeled by droplets of sweat and defeated attitude, as if he had loaded a heavy slab.

“It’s hot?” – I tell him knowing already an answer, “he has always been hot in summer, but this is hell,” he replies. “Who comes up to the street with the heat it does,” I say while I open the door of the portal and take a step back remembering the apocalyptic vision of Sarah Connor Abrasada by nuclear flames in ‘Terminator ‘.

Has always been hot in summer

According to The data Aemet, it is true that as my neighbor had told me, has always been hot in summer…But not so much. The temperatures recorded in recent weeks leave last June as The warmest of the historical seriesand joins the long list of records of extraordinarily warm months.

NASA itself He supported with data that they are now warmer than those of yesteryear, taking into account that their records date back to 1880. In addition, these heat episodes are increasingly frequent because summers are increasingly long. On average, it is estimated that the climatological summer has been stretching between four and fifteen days per decade.

Our grandparents adapted

While it is true that Spain has always been a country with hot summers, there is a factor that we should not overlook: today We do not face the rigors of heat as our grandparents didbecause we We do not change our working days depending on the temperature as they did.

When I was a child, my grandfather told me that “in her young years”, it came out before the field was made to work the earth “with the fresh” before the slab of the heat of the Andalusian countryside fell on the day laborers. At noon, when the sun tightened, they sat down under a chaparro (oak) to eat in the shade and then nap until early in the afternoon.

Then, they went to the farmhouse in which he worked and performed there other tasks of cleaning, maintenance and care of animals until the end of the day. ALWAYS TO THE SUN CAKE. In winter they usually did the other way around and reached the field when the frost had dissolved.

That is, they took advantage of the first rays of light to perform the toughest agricultural tasks to avoid high temperatures and rigor of the sun in the hours of greater insolation. As much as it was the mowing, harvesting or planting season, they tried to avoid the central hours of the day, and instead, they advanced or delayed their working days to adapt to the weather. There was no one closed and strict schedule For the whole year.

On the other hand, at present, the Adaptation of the tasks and working days It is minimal and the schedules have been standardized. It doesn’t matter if it is an office, mason or mailbox work, and it is not taken into account whether on the street it is freezing or mercury marks the 46 ºC. The schedule is the same for everyone throughout the year.

Heat -inflected hours

This standardization of schedules makes it normal for an employee of the Municipal Maintenance Service, one of the groups that most work accidents and Deaths due to heat blows has suffered In recent daysbe cleaning the sidewalks at two o’clock in the afternoon in full wave of heat, or that an installer is placing a label on a facade at three.

According to data from the Carlos III Health Institute facilitated By the National Institute for Work and Health at Labor (INST), it ensures that per year there are about 1,300 deaths attributable to heat. Around 4% of fatal accidents that occur in the workplace are caused by heat blows due to prolonged exposure at extreme temperatures.

The most exposed professions are those that cannot develop their main outdoor activity: agricultural sector, cleaning operators and public works, assemblers, construction workers or gardeners. Thermal stress also affects professions that develop indoors that due to the nature of work, they are exposed to machinery or heat sources such as industries, hospitality, laundry, greenhouses, etc.

Andalusia, Catalonia, Madrid, Aragon and Galicia They are located At the head in terms of mortality due to heat, coinciding in many of those cases with personnel used in the sectors that we have mentioned before.

Unlike our grandparents, these sectors now have fixed schedules that, in many cases, develop between 8 in the morning and 18 hours, leaving them exposed to work during those hours that our grandparents tried to avoid at all costs.

The tools are there

Approval in 2023 of Royal Decree Law 4/2023 He came to make the adaptation of schedules and tasks that already enjoyed our grandparents, so that companies, rather than look at the clock, must look at the thermometer to design the working days of their employees during extreme heat episodes.

The Occupational Risk Prevention Law It offers companies to modify schedules and even cut the working days during these heat episodes to protect their employees.

In addition, following the Dana that razed Valenciathe Law was extended Adding the possibility of having a four -day paid permission when, in extreme cases, the working day cannot be adapted and it is impossible to carry it out without exposing itself to a real health risk. The last modification also contemplates the possibility that companies can benefit from a climate ERTE. “No one has to take risks,” insist From the ministry.

However, despite the tools that allow companies Protect the health of your employeesthe National Institute for Safety and Health at work ensures that occupational accidents during heat waves increase by 17%. Many of them are avoidable just by advancing or delaying working hours in a timely manner during these episodes.

Victoria Chacón, spokesman for CGT in one of the contractor companies of the Barcelona cleaning service for which one of the last victims of this first heat wave of 2025 worked, gave one of the keys to this lack of adaptation of the schedules in extreme heat episodes: “We started working at 5:30 in the morning. This year, to save paying half a half hour of work ‘night H “, He denounced from Eldiario.es.

Aitana Garí, Director of the National Institute for Labor Safety and Health (INST) He explained that both among companies and among the workers themselves “lack of culture in the evaluation of climatic risks.”

According to The data provided By the Ministry of Labor, only in 2024, Labor Inspection performed 11,500 actions on adverse weather conditions, which have left 275 infractions and 4,175 requirements. Failure to comply with occupational risk prevention regulations involves fines ranging from 2,451 to 49,180 euros for serious sanctions, up to 49,181 to more than 980,000 euros for the very serious ones.

In 2021, the amount of sanctions to companies for this reason amounted to 175,000 euros. In 2024, that amount reached almost 1.4 million euros.

In Xataka | There is heat wave, you work less: what does the law say exactly on the workday under extreme temperatures

Image | Unspash (Ivan Henao, Antoine Pouligny)