From many quarters, after every massacre of workers, indignant cries are raised: No more than 1,000 deaths at work per year!!! Enough of 3 deaths at work a day!!!
Regardless of the fact that even a single death at work would be unacceptable, are we really sure that this is the case?
According to slightly more accurate calculations, i work-related deaths amount to more than thirty a day (including holidays…)!
Let’s see together why…
From “official” sources (Open Data published by INAIL last January) we learn that in 2023, in our country there were over 585,000 complaints of Accident at work (and the figure is certainly an understatement).
More than a thousand deaths were reported (provisional data for 2023); those on work occasions were nine more than the previous year.
Thirty-six victims in 15 “multiple” fatal accidents and tens of thousands of workers who reported after-effects disabling (not infrequently highly disabling).
In Lombardy there were almost 110,000 reports of accidents at work (172 fatal)
In the same period, 72,754 were reported Illnesses of professional origin (this is rounded off a lot by default, given the enormous circumvention of the widely tolerated reporting obligation): 19.7% more than in 2022.
Almost two out of three pathologies concern the musculoskeletal system (back, neck, limbs,…). Diseases follow nervous systemup by 12.6% over 2022. The increase recorded by the tumors, whose complaints (it should be remembered: always very underestimated) went from 1,630 in 2022 to 2,018 in 2023 (+23.8%). Furthermore, the damage to the cardiovascular, respiratory and endocrine systems is not negligible.
In Lombardyin the past year, there were 3,809 reports of occupational disease: almost 18% more than the 3,231 in 2022. And, in any case, a ridiculous percentage (only 5.2%) of national reports in the region with the most workers in Italy !!!
The OPRA – Regional Joint Body for the Crafts of Lazio (joint body, therefore not made up of rowdy agitators, but rather of representatives of the confederal unions and employers) has calculated that every year in Italy: tens of thousands of workers die from occupational diseases, seven thousand of which tumors professional, of which only less than 20% is identified/reported by hospitals and doctors of various origins (sensational under-reporting), while the remaining accumulation concerns non-neoplastic pathologies affecting the cardiovascular, respiratory and neurological districts. However mortal!
And the data, well hidden among the deliberately complicated statistical folds, find direct and indirect confirmation in various documented reports (UNASF of Conflavoro PMI; ILO International Labor Organization; AIRTUM Italian Cancer Registry Association, …)
All this while of the already few reports of professional neoplasia that reach INAIL (1,805 in 2022), much less than half are recognised: 760 in the same year! Just 42% of
They are invisible deaths that happen every day, without spotlights on, without journalistic and television investigations, without major strikes by the unions.
On the other hand, the IARC International Agency for Research on Cancer, has cataloged, orIn addition to asbestos, there are another 120 agents that are certainly carcinogenic and 82 that are probably carcinogenic to humans, many of which are present in work environments.
In conclusion: 10,000 deaths for MP + 1,000 for InfLav = 11,000
So: more than 30 workers per day, most of whom we know nothing about: neither their names, nor their illness, nor their work…!
In a second part of the speech, the structural situation of the bodies responsible for control was analysed, the situation of dramatic shortage of personnel and tools in which they find themselves and the concrete repercussions on the drama of deaths at work; obviously we also propose solutions. Above all, obviously the introduction of the crime of murder at work
All this will be the subject of the second part of the press release which will be published soon.
*Claudio Mendicino, USB militant, was an occupational doctor in service at the company until 2023
