Foresight: Athletes are workers – they need protection from the heat

By Manal Azzi

Heat is a silent killer that threatens the health and lives of a growing number of workers around the world. This is the urgent warning in a new report by the International Labour Organization, which we published on 25 July this year.

On the same day, the United Nations Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, called for action: ‘We need measures to protect workers, grounded in human rights.’

The evidence is clear. Every year, more than 2.4 billion workers are exposed to the sun and rising temperatures. Almost 19,000 workers die from non-melanoma skin cancer, while another 22.85 million suffer a range of workplace injuries. As our report underlines, athletes including professional footballers belong to the most physically demanding occupations. They need protection, and they need it now.

The danger begins with excess heat: rising air temperatures and, often, greater humidity. In today’s European summer, for example, footballers are playing in hotter conditions than a decade ago. In July this year, where the temperature climbed above 40 degrees in the Romanian capital, Bucharest, the players’ union and the professional league agreed to change kick-off times and introduce cooling breaks.

Athletes are particularly vulnerable for one simple reason: the heat which they generate themselves. As they exert themselves on the pitch, often for 90 minutes or more, footballers produce metabolic heat. The harder and longer they run, the greater the heat, and the higher the risk they face.

Under these conditions, players find themselves exposed to heat stress and its harmful effects. These can range from mild symptoms, such as fatigue and dizziness, to the serious risks of exhaustion, heat stroke, and fluid disorders, and then ultimately the long-term conditions that shorten our lives, such as cardiovascular disease and cancer.

But the risks do not stop here. Like all athletes, footballers work under intense psychological pressure. Driven to perform at their best, they sometimes play through the pain, ignore the signs of danger, and keep any doubts to themselves.

A rising workload only heightens the risk: more games, less rest, and shorter breaks between seasons all promise even greater stress. As footballers play more tournaments in the heat of summer, they are more vulnerable to fatigue, injury, anxiety, and depression. The need for proper regulation, within a broader culture of respect for health and safety, has never been so urgent.

The International Labour Organization has worked for more than a century to improve conditions in the workplace. Our vision is clear: decent work for every human being. As a specialised agency of the United Nations, we serve 187 member states around the world.

Informed by decades of research and policymaking, we have produced a body of law and guidance that protects all workers from extreme weather and the emerging risks of our climate crisis. Our fundamental conventions declare that all professional athletes have the right to protection; they all have a right to health and safety in the workplace.

Our convention on Occupational Safety and Health underlines that prevention and precaution are vital. We define health in the workplace as not only the ‘absence of disease or infirmity’ but also the ‘physical and mental elements affecting health which are directly related to safety and hygiene at work.’ In other words, we all enjoy a basic right to feel safe and protected in our place of work.

The convention calls on employers to ensure that the workplace poses no risk to workers’ health. Laws alone are never enough. How organisations decide to implement them – through their institutions, culture, and norms – is critical to good governance.

In this spirit, employers should provide athletes and their representatives with adequate information, proper training, and the opportunity to ask questions and take part in decision-making. Employers should listen to what athletes are saying.

In short, our convention upholds the values and principles of collective governance, where workers and their employers share a vision of the workplace and how to improve its conditions. Dialogue is vital.

In 2022, the ILO offered support and guidance as FIFPRO and the World Leagues Forum negotiated the first-ever Global Labour Agreement in professional football. It was at our headquarters in Geneva that the two partners effectively signed a new social contract, where the dignity and rights of every worker are secured by collective governance. They founded a new democratic institution to embody that contract, and the ILO looks forward to the work that lies ahead.

The agreement echoes one of the conclusions of our new report on heat: social dialogue must be the foundation for action. Workers and their representatives must take part in the decisions that lead to a healthier, safer workplace.

As our world heats up, bringing new risks to the football pitch, the workplace for tens of thousands of footballers around the world, collective governance points to a better future. It presents an opportunity for workers and their employers to sit around the same table, with cool heads and clear minds, so that together they manage the risks of our climate crisis.

At the ILO, we stand ready to support their work.