The Master Plumbers Association (MPA) of NSW has flatly rejected claims by the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) that nationwide stop-work orders at 35°C are practical, proportionate, or in Australia’s national interest.
Australia is already grappling with a declared skills shortage, a productivity slump, and an escalating housing and infrastructure crisis. The Reserve Bank again highlighted this week that weak productivity remains a significant economic threat. Against that backdrop, blanket temperature-based stop-work rules would only compound an already fragile situation.
“This isn’t a safety policy, it’s an economic handbrake,” said MPA NSW CEO Nathaniel Smith. “At a time when Australia desperately needs more homes built, more infrastructure delivered and more apprentices trained, the ACTU is pushing a rule that deliberately shuts down work regardless of risk, controls or common sense. That is reckless.”
MPA NSW is unequivocal that worker safety must always come first. Heat stress is a real issue and must be actively managed under existing Work Health and Safety laws. But imposing a hard national shutdown at 35°C, irrespective of task type, humidity, mitigation measures, acclimatisation or site controls, is blunt, inflexible and economically irresponsible.
“If this logic held up, would we cancel NRL and AFL preseason training the moment the thermometer hits 35°C?” Smith said. “Would we shut down emergency works, outdoor public events or essential services every summer? Of course not. Risk is managed, not avoided, through blanket bans dreamed up in union offices.”
The industry has already seen the real-world damage caused by these policies in Queensland. Under CFMEU-style temperature and humidity thresholds, combined with RDOs and statutory holidays, January can deliver as few as five productive workdays on major construction projects. That outcome is neither sustainable nor replicable in NSW or nationally.
Australia’s construction and trades workforce has always worked in tough conditions. What matters is how those conditions are managed. Existing WHS laws already give workers the absolute right to stop work if there is a genuine and immediate health risk. Employers are already legally required to provide hydration, shade, rest breaks, task rotation, appropriate PPE and altered start times.
“The idea that workers are unprotected unless everything stops at 35°C is simply false,” Smith said. “This is about industrial leverage, not safety.”
The Master Plumbers Association of NSW supports practical, site-specific heat management plans based on real risk factors, including humidity, radiant heat, workload, and available controls, rather than ideological thresholds designed to reduce output.
“At a time when the country needs productivity, skills and common sense more than ever, the unions have gone too far,” Smith said. “Worker safety and productivity are not competing values, but reckless stop-work rules risk destroying both.”
Australia is a nation of hard-working people who understand balance, responsibility and practicality. Blanket shutdowns based on temperature alone undermine all three.