Conversations around climate action in the fashion industry largely still focus on mitigation, not adaptation. Meanwhile, workers producing garments and textiles are already vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, happening now, not in the far future. One of the most urgent climate threats to worker wellbeing, as well as the sustainability and stability of supply chain operations globally, is extreme heat.
HeatWatch is a non-profit organisation pushing to expand awareness, capacity and accountability on extreme heat in India. Last week, the organisation collaborated with supply chain data platform Open Supply Hub to launch Mapping the Heat. This new dashboard provides insights into temperatures being experienced across India’s textile sector, revealing sweltering conditions at factories and surrounding communities.
In this Q&A, we talk to HeatWatch’s Vasundhara Jhobta to explore how extreme heat is already affecting workers’ health, dignity, productivity, and everyday lives inside garment and textile factories. We also discuss what the industry could be doing to support these workers, including dual solutions that have the potential to reduce emissions and energy consumption and manage workplace heat adaptation.
This links closely to the Clean Heat for Cool Work framework we launched last year with Fashion Revolution, which proposes a combination of worker-led temperature monitoring, with interventions that reduce heat on the factory floor by running thermal processes with clean electricity rather than burning fossil fuels onsite.
Key Findings
- 78% of workers skip breaks to meet production targets
- Workers who skip breaks report nearly double the heat stress levels
- 78.3% of workers struggle to get permission to use the toilet during work hours
- Southern Asia could lose 43 million full-time jobs to heat stress by 2030
- Heat stress affects productivity, worker health, product quality, and long-term supply chain resilience
1.Your research focuses on the lived experiences of garment workers facing extreme heat. What were some of the most striking or unexpected findings from your recent report Breaking Point: Heat and the Garment Floor? Was there a particular story or experience that has stayed with you?
One of the most striking findings from our research was how deeply normalized extreme and dehumanizing working conditions have become inside many factories.
Nearly 78% of workers told us that they skip breaks in order to meet production targets, and workers who skip breaks reported almost double the heat stress levels of those who do not. At the same time, 78.3% of workers said that it is difficult to get permission to use the toilet during work hours.
These findings reveal how tightly controlled workers’ bodies and time are inside factories. The pressure to constantly produce, even under dangerous heat conditions, strips workers of dignity and autonomy over their own bodies.
One particular story of a 28-year-old garment worker in Tamil Nadu sticks with me. She works in a spinning mill that requires constant walking and standing, and she is only allowed to sit during a 15-minute lunch break. She told us that extreme heat, humidity, and constant movement inside the factory had caused severe rashes on her inner thighs. Every day, the friction from walking left her skin raw and painfully inflamed, but she still could not stop working or take additional breaks. She repeatedly requested to be moved to another department, but her supervisor denied the request. She told us how this condition left her feeling isolated and withdrawn, affected her confidence, and even her marriage.
This made me realize how the impacts of extreme heat and poor working conditions are often far more intimate and invisible than we acknowledge. We document cases of workers fainting on factory floors or developing chronic illnesses, but we rarely discuss how heat can alter someone’s relationship with their own body, affect their self-worth, or strain their personal and familial lives. Her story reflects how low wages, lack of rest, poor workplace protections, and limited access to healthcare force people to continue working through pain and exhaustion in ways that are profoundly undignified.
2. From your perspective, where are the biggest data gaps when it comes to understanding the impacts of climate change on workers in fashion supply chains?
Fashion supply chain data is inaccessible and opaque at many levels. In our interactions, workers have said that brand audits and buyer visits usually happen behind closed doors, and workers are threatened from disclosing the reality of wages, working hours, and working conditions. There is also no documentation of home-based or subcontracted workers who work below minimum wages to meet the strictly regulated production targets for the global supply chain.
Adding the additional layer of climate change and its impact on workers is even more complex to map. One of the biggest gaps is in mapping indoor temperatures and humidity inside factories to understand the extent of heat at work. With supply chain data from Open Supply Hub, HeatWatch has created a dashboard mapping manufacturing facilities against ambient temperatures in the region. While the ambient temperatures themselves show how industrial clusters in India might be exposed to heat, there is still a gap in accessing real-time temperature and humidity data from the facilities. This may include even more intense experiences of heat in different parts of the factory, such as the boiler room and ironing stations.
The impact of climate change is compounded by a lack of workplace infrastructure, such as rest spaces, drinking water, hygienic washrooms, as well as the built form of factories, its building materials, ventilation provisions, cooling mechanisms, and roof design. All of which also need comprehensive mapping within the facility.
3. What are some of the most important interventions at a factory level that help manage the impacts of extreme heat? And what is preventing them from being widely rolled out?
To manage extreme heat, cooling infrastructure such as heat-insulated roofing sheets, air conditioning, and the insulation of heat-generating machines (which also improves energy efficiency), all play a role in reducing temperature. However, many small manufacturing units cannot bear the cost of installation and maintenance of these solutions.
In our conversations with factory managers, there was an acknowledgement of the impact of heat on worker comfort and productivity, but they were unable to effectively bring cooling solutions at a large scale inside the factories. In that regard, I believe buyers and brands, alongside governments, also have a responsibility to support suppliers in implementing such solutions.
The second category of intervention includes proper work-rest cycles, adequate breaks for hydration, availability of hygienic washrooms, paid sick leave, regulation on overtime work, and availability of first aid on the factory floor. However, the entire industry is working on aggressive production targets. Here, we believe both the manufacturers and buyers have a role to play. Suppliers are contractually obligated to fulfill targets despite extreme heat, so when heat reduces productivity, workers are then forced to work overtime to compensate for the work lost.
One effective way to address these problems is to shift the burden from workers and suppliers towards governments and brands, pushing them to financially support cooling infrastructure inside factories. Investments in ventilation, cooling systems, heat-resilient factory design, clinics inside factories, and other worker-centered adaptation measures can help protect worker health while also supporting productivity and long-term supply chain resilience
4. A lot of fashion brands talk about climate commitments, but is the industry waking up to managing the existing impacts of climate change? How, if anything, are brands addressing heat exposure and other climate threats in their supply chains?
Many brands have made ambitious climate commitments and net-zero pledges, and there is growing recognition that climate risks are already affecting global supply chains. However, as highlighted in the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre’s report The Missing Thread, many of these commitments remain focused primarily on rapid decarbonization rather than a just transition.
The problem is that the workers producing garments for these brands are already among the most vulnerable people in the supply chain. If climate action is implemented without centering these workers, there is a real risk that the transition itself could deepen existing inequalities and vulnerabilities rather than reduce them.
Responses to climate change often remain compliance-driven and top-down. Workers themselves are rarely included in deciding what safety measures are needed, whether interventions are actually working on the factory floor, or how workplace conditions should change. One of the key recommendations from our report is precisely that worker representatives and trade unions must be meaningfully included in these conversations between brands, suppliers, and manufacturers. There should be mandatory worker participation in heat-risk assessments, and the establishment of joint worker-management safety committees to ensure that adaptation measures reflect workers’ lived realities and needs.
Ultimately, a climate-resilient fashion industry cannot be built through emissions targets and sustainability reporting alone. It must also ensure that the transition is fair, worker-led, and grounded in dignity, safety, and labour rights.
5. Your work shows that climate mitigation and adaptation can no longer be seen as separate issues. Do you see opportunities for climate solutions like renewable energy or electrification to be integrated with improved working conditions and worker health?
The same interventions that reduce emissions can also create safer and healthier working conditions if they are designed with workers’ wellbeing at the centre.
For many MSMEs (micro, small and medium-sized enterprises), the biggest barrier is the perceived cost of cooling. Renewable energy solutions such as rooftop solar thus become extremely important because they can reduce operational electricity costs while also making it more financially viable for factories to run industrial-grade cooling. A few factory managers we spoke to had already begun exploring solar energy precisely for this reason. Interventions such as improved ventilation, reflective roofing, passive cooling design, shaded workspaces, better insulation, and energy-efficient cooling systems also often have relatively low implementation and maintenance costs while improving indoor heat conditions, as shown in the ILR Global Labor Institute’s Case Studies in Heat Adaptation in Southeast Asian Factories.
At a broader level, climate mitigation measures have the possibility of creating a sector that is both lower-carbon and more humane to work in. Emissions reduction is, of course, essential, and industries need to transition toward more energy-efficient systems. But climate action cannot be approached in a way where reducing emissions becomes prioritized at the cost of worker wellbeing. Instead, mitigation efforts need to be far more comprehensive.
A truly sustainable transition is one that reduces emissions without transferring the burden of climate action onto workers themselves.
6. What role could collective agreements like the International Accord play in protecting workers from extreme heat? Are there other frameworks that could play a role in addressing this issue at scale?
The International Accord has set a precedent for binding, enforceable protections against extreme heat across global fashion supply chains. One significant contribution is recognizing heat stress as a serious occupational health and safety hazard and institutionalizing heat risk protocols. However, extreme heat must also be formally recognized as an occupational hazard in national legislation, alongside stronger global protections for workers.
Another framework to think about is treating heat stress as a shared global responsibility within the supply chain. Countries in the Global North have historically contributed a disproportionate share of greenhouse gas emissions and are signatories to international climate agreements such as the Paris Agreement and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. There is, therefore, a strong case for requiring brands headquartered in North America and Europe to financially support suppliers in implementing workplace heat adaptation measures.
There are also important legislative examples from other countries that offer lessons for addressing workplace heat exposure at scale.
| Legislative Example: In 2021, Qatar passed a landmark ministerial decision prohibiting both indoor and outdoor work whenever the Wet Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT) exceeds 32.1°C. The regulation also gave workers the right to remove themselves from situations where they reasonably believe heat stress threatens their health or safety, without fear of retaliation or wage cuts. |
This right to self-determination is especially important for addressing how heat impacts each person differently and ensures worker protection and dignity.
7. Unfortunately, brands often prioritise only climate interventions with a clear business case – but what does the cost of inaction look like when it comes to heat stress?
As our report highlights, there is a clear business case for addressing heat stress. Productivity is deeply linked with safe and comfortable working conditions. There is enough evidence from India and South Asia to show that failing to manage heat stress leads to considerable costs for businesses through lost productivity and reduced output.
A broad, multi-year study by Somanathan et al. (2021), using official data from more than 58,000 manufacturing plants across India, found that for every 1°C rise in the annual average temperature, companies face an average revenue decline of about 2%. The ILO also projects that by 2030, over 2% of total working hours worldwide will be lost to heat exposure, with Southern Asia expected to see a loss of 5.3%, totaling 43 million full-time jobs.
From our interactions on the ground, we found that managers were also concerned about declining product quality as workers became increasingly exhausted during periods of extreme heat. In addition, heat-related illnesses were contributing to higher absenteeism, further affecting productivity and factory operations.
However, there are already examples of practical, low-cost interventions that improve both worker wellbeing and productivity without placing additional pressure on workers. One recent study demonstrated that simple measures such as improving ventilation and replacing lighting with LEDs reduced factory temperatures by over 4 degrees, covering costs in under eight months.
Brands need to invest in supporting suppliers to roll out these measures to help prepare the sector for worsening climatic conditions.
