The debate on unrelated deaths in Italy has reignited after less than a month from the accident at the power station on Lake Suviana and two months from collapse on a supermarket construction site in Florence, five workers died on Monday 6 May in Casteldaccia, in the Palermo area, during a maintenance operation on the sewage system. In Italy in the first three months of 2024, 191 workplace victims were recorded, last year the number of fatal accidents reached 1,041.
“Dying at work is a worrying sign of a fragile society, in which there is not work for everyone and when there is, often it is not dignified, it is underpaid, it is not respectful of human dignity”, said the Archbishop of Monreale Monsignor Gualtiero Isacchi during the funeral of Ignazio Giordano, one of the five victims in Casteldaccia. “We are often presented with the impressive numbers of unrelated deaths which are increasing day by day: they are not numbers, they are men and women and sometimes minors betrayed by that work in which they placed hope”, added Isacchi.
In Milan over one hundred coffins in the square against unrelated deaths
The protest was organized by Uil which asked Giorgia Meloni’s government to do more to protect workers. The coffins arranged in the square were 172 in total, the number of deaths in the Lombardy region in 2023. “Today is a day of anger, of anguish, because behind every coffin that we have placed here there are names and surnames,” explained Uil trade unionist Enrico Vezza.
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“Since the beginning of 2024 we have reached 41 people who have died at work in Lombardy, we believe this is unacceptable,” he added. The union’s campaign is entitled “Zero deaths”.
A sign in the center of the square showed the number of deaths of workers who have died at work since 2018, with a peak of 1,709 in 2020when the Covid pandemic caused the numbers to soar in Italy.