Labor Consultants – The number of unrelated deaths is reducing

White deaths: an intolerable plague on the Italian labor market. In 2023, however, INAIL data highlight positive signs, indicating a contraction in fatal cases (from 1,090 to 1,041, with a decrease of 4.5%). An even more appreciable trend if framed within the positive dynamics that characterized the labor market in 2023, with an increase of 481 thousand employed (+2.1% growth compared to 2022). The report of the Foundation for Labor Consultant Studies, “Health and safety at work. The situation in 2023”, presented today at the Annual Forum on the topic, highlights how the decline was mainly caused by accidents in the workplace (-19.2%). This trend, which is based on still provisional data, leads us to think that after the Covid-19 emergency, the attention of Italian companies, including small and medium-sized ones, on health and safety in the workplace has increased. A picture that is however very fragmented: attention towards safety at work continues to be very heterogeneous among companies and very conditioned by size and sectors. As regards the sectors, among the least virtuous is agriculture (64.2% of the Labor Consultants interviewed assessed the level of safety in the sector as low or very low). To increase the current levels of safety in companies, in addition to strengthening and increasing controls by the bodies responsible for the law, we should focus, according to Labor Consultants, on three areas of opportunity. First of all on the training of young people, because there is still little attention from companies towards this aspect. It is also important to invest in new technologies, since access to available financing, such as Inail tenders, is still very limited for SMEs. And, finally, improve management tools, taking advantage of the experience of company protocols, tested during the pandemic period, which had a positive impact both on internal safety levels and on workers’ orientation towards prevention and on the innovation of security strategies.

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