Good news: In La Palma in the Canary Islands, temperatures are dropping

Lamentations of the Texas Workers

An AFP journalist interviewed construction workers in Texas, where temperatures exceeded 40°. He says: Manor Alvarez was sitting on a platform to paint a 10-meter-high wall in the scorching Texas heat when he suddenly came down with a fever.

“I’ve suffered from heat stress before. Do you know what it does? Cramps in the legs and arms, headaches, vomiting and palpitations,” says Guatemalan house painter Manor Alvarez. “But when I complained to my supervisor downstairs,​​​​ He tells me to keep working (…) I’m going down because I can’t take it anymore (…) If I’d stayed five minutes longer, I wouldn’t have come here to talk about it.”

These days, workers and their representatives are protesting in Houston against a recent law approved by Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas, questioning the right of construction workers in cities like Dallas or Austin to take a hydration break every four hours.

The law, which will take effect in September, does not ban these watering holes, but prefers to harmonize regulations at the state level on various topics related to labor law or agriculture, rather than leaving municipalities, which typically are legislatively run by Democrats. In the title.

During the rally in Houston, AFP tells AFP, Luz Martinez, a construction worker, described how she had to work in a 20-story building where workers had to go to the ground floor to drink outside. . “On July 4, a public holiday (in the US), we renovated a school, in a closed space, without air conditioning, because there are some people who don’t want to pay for electricity,” he explains, recalling a colleague. He felt unwell. “We are dying. It is not fair to deprive us of water, to lose the intervals to hydrate ourselves,” he adds.

Record temperatures are expected in the state this weekend, including 46°C in Corpus Christi in the south on Saturday.