In 2021, 1,404 workers died due to accidents at work, of these 695 in the places of activity (+ 18% compared to 2020), while the remaining ‘in itiniere’, i.e. on the way to or from the workplace. “And it should be emphasized that last year there was a halt to many production activities due to the Covid emergency”, recalls the independent national observatory on labor deaths, coordinated by Carlo Soricelli with voluntary activity (http: // cadutisullavoro. blogspot.It). Furthermore, monitoring does not count deaths from Covid cases. Well, compared to the 2008 opening of the observatory, the increase in deaths in the workplace is 9%. “In these 14 years there has been no improvement, despite the fact that the state through its institutions has spent billions of euros on security”.
From the beginning of 2021 to November 30, Inail received 1,116 reports of fatal accidents (the data for December are therefore missing), “but many categories of workers are not insured by this institute and therefore not all fatal accidents are recorded. In addition, there are cases of illegal work, these too obviously not estimated by Inail data “. The category with the most deaths is agriculture: 30.22% of the total cases and of these as many as 75% concerned workers crushed by the tractor (158 in all to die like this, and the age varies from 14 to 88 years) .
Construction records 15% of the total deaths, and in the majority of cases it was falls from a height. “There are many illegal workers who have lost their lives in this sector, especially in the southern regions”. Road transport accounts for 10.75% of total workplace deaths. This category includes all those who drive a vehicle on roads and highways: “It will not be a coincidence that road transport due to online purchases has increased exponentially”.
In industry there are 5.89% of deaths in the workplace, “relatively very few” and they are almost all in small and very small companies “where there is no union or safety officer”. In medium and large companies, cases are almost non-existent, the observatory notes, and those few are almost always workers who work within the company itself but who are not direct employees, but employees of contractors: “The companies and trade unions they must make sure that these workers carry out their work safely and are protected like employees “, exhorts Soricelli in the communiqué with which he disseminates the figures.
There is also “a myriad of artisans or their employees who lose their lives while working. And let’s also remember policemen, carabinieri and firefighters who are not insured by Inail”. Over 60 deaths at work are more than 20% of the total, especially in agriculture, construction and among artisans. “You cannot let older workers do dangerous jobs.”
But, Soricelli continues, “there are also many young people in their twenties who die at work, especially precarious, who lost their lives in 2021. Not only Luana D’Orazio (the worker who died in a Tuscan textile company, ed), but also dozens of other young people who carried out dangerous jobs without any preparation, and with the risk of being fired if they had to object to the activity they had to carry out “. Finally, the report highlights that “there has been a sharp decline in deaths among foreigners compared to previous years. Prior to the years of Covid, the percentage was always around 10% of the total. Above all Moroccan, Albanian and Romanian workers among deaths “.
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