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Adriano, Paolo, Alessandro, Vincenzo, Pavel, Mario, Vincenzo. These are the names of the seven workers who died following the explosion that occurred inside the Enel Green Power plant in Bargi, in the province of Bologna, on 9 April. Among them there were those who had married just a year ago and had known the joy of fatherhood even less than that, like Vincenzo Franchina, the youngest of the victims. There were those, like Pavel Tanase, who were the father of twins, and those like Alessandro D’Andrea who planned to get married to his partner. There were those, like Vincenzo Garzillo and Mario Pisani, who were already retired, but continued to work, making use of their experience. Then there were Adriano Scandellari and Paolo Casiraghi, 57 and 59 years old, with the aim of a peaceful retirement after a lifetime of work. They, like more than a thousand people every year in Italy, died from work. The Prosecutor’s Office is investigating the causes of their deaths, with the aim of reconstructing and assigning any blame, if there is any.
The deaths of the past
The Bargi massacre has reignited the issue of safety at work in the public debate. On 11 April, two days after the explosion, there was a protest procession in Bologna called by the CGIL and UIL unions in which the mayor Lepore and the governor Bonaccini also participated.
Similar reactions had also occurred for other white deaths. In 2021, upon the death of a 22-year-old man, Yaya Yafa, crushed by a truck at the Bentivoglio Interport, was followed by numerous mobilizations and requests for greater safety in the workplace. In December 2022 a 30-year-old worker, Giuseppe Leanza, had lost his life while working, falling from a skylight inside a shed where he worked. In December 2023, a 52-year-old worker, Alfredo Morgesehad lost his life while working at Bologna airport, and died in the same month Thomas Crispin50 years old, while working on a construction site in Pian del Spero, in the province of Bologna.
The numbers
Reporting the exact numbers of workplace deaths is a difficult task: there is no institutionalized observatory, nor is there a law for workplace homicide, which would certainly help in the perception of the phenomenon. The only observatories that exist are those of insurance institutions (such as Inail), trade unions or independent ones. In most cases, newspapers report the numbers from Inail, which every year provides a complete report on the workplace deaths of the previous year. As some independent observers point out, such as the specialized site ‘Caduti sul lavoro’, 30% of workers have no insurance, or one other than Inail. For this reason, when reading the numbers, it is good to ‘tare’ what you are reading. It is likely that the data we are used to reading are significantly lower estimates. Having said this, the data allow us to broadly quantify the phenomenon.
The white deaths in Bologna
According to data from the Occupational Safety and Environment Observatory of Vega Engineering of Mestre, the metropolitan area of Bologna is among the best in Italy considering the cases of death at work with the number of employees. In 2023, in Bologna and its province, ten people died while working (in itinere cases, i.e. people who died on the way to or from work, are excluded from the count). Bologna is at number 83 in the ranking out of 105 provinces in total, with an index of 21.3 fatal accidents per million occupants. The Emilian capital is well below the national average, which in 2023 was 34.6 fatal accidents per million employed.
If we include traveling deaths, the numbers increase significantly. This time the INAIL data, processed by the CGIL of Bologna, are examined. Fatal accidents in Emilia-Romagna, in 2023 compared to 2022, increased by 3.4%: 88 in 2022 and 91 in 2023, of which 20 commuting and 71 at work. Black jersey for Reggio-Emilia, which recorded a 133% increase in deaths compared to 2021. In Bologna, compared to the same year, deaths decreased by 21.1% in 2023, but in any case the province of the capital it is the one in which the most workplace deaths were recorded (15). Males represent the large majority of workplace deaths: in 2023 there were 84, or 92.3% of the total. The age group most affected was between 41 and 65 years old with 60 deaths out of 91 total. The majority of Italians also died while working in 2023 (72, equal to 79.1% of the total), although the figure regarding the employment of foreigners and Italians is not specified.
The national framework
In 2023, 1,041 people died from work in Italy. Again according to data from the Occupational Safety and Environment Observatory of Vega Engineering of Mestre, the regions where there is the greatest risk, in relation to the number of employees, are Abruzzo, Umbria, Basilicata, Puglia, Molise, Campania and Calabria. Followed by Sicily and Emilia-Romagna.
Workplace deaths in 2023 were 4.5% lower than those in 2022, but the minus sign only emerges if we also consider accidents at work ‘in itinere’, i.e. during the normal journey to/from work. If, however, only accidents at work are considered, excluding the home-work journey, then the number of workplace deaths in 2023 is higher than that of 2022 (+1.1%, i.e. 790 in 2022 and 799 in 2023) .
In the data from Vega Engineering we can see that foreign workers who died in 2023 were 155 out of 799. Comparing this to the number of employed people, it is clear that foreigners have a risk of death at work that is more than double that of Italians. Foreigners, in fact, record 65.3 deaths for every million employed people, compared to 31.1 Italians who lose their lives while working for every million employed people.
In absolute numbers, Lombardy is the Italian region where the most deaths occur at work: 133 victims in 2023. Emilia-Romagna is fourth in this ranking, with 70 deaths in 2023. Women who have lost their lives at work in 2023 there were 55, while 31 lost their lives en route, i.e. on the home-work journey. The most dangerous sector is construction: as many as 150 deaths in 2023. This is followed by logistics and manufacturing activities. The age group numerically most affected by fatal accidents is that of 55 to 64 years (292 out of 799), even if the data changes if it is read in relation to the number of employed people: in this case, the most affected group is that of over 65s (138.3 deaths per million employed).
The reactions
“A national emergency that cannot be remembered only when tragedies occur” said the governor of Emilia-Romagna Stefano Bonaccini in the demonstration following the Bargi massacre. “We can’t take it anymore,” he said Ivana Veronese, secretary of the Uil of Bologna –. The government must listen to us, sit down seriously and address things seriously, not with one-off measures. Security is there or it isn’t; the culture of safety is there or we won’t do anything about the points-based license for builders. Suviana was not a construction site, so that company will not be deducted from its credit license points. This is profoundly wrong. We want to achieve zero deaths at work: people must leave home in the morning confident of being able to return in the evening. We can do a lot, we can do it together: we have made some proposals, so that they will listen to us.”
He had used the same tones Michele Bulgarelli, secretary of the CGIL of Bologna: “This is a massacre of workers that we had no memory of in the recent past of this city.” The day of the demonstration, for Bulgarelli, was not only a day of pain, but also of anger: “This massacre of workers marks a before and an after in the history of our country”. “One of the most dramatic stories of our country – he saidThe VO Sorrento, national secretary of Filctem, the CGIL trade union for workers in the chemical, energy and manufacturing fields -. The problem of workers in the energy sector is underestimated: Enel workers have been in dispute for two months over outsourcing and safety-related problems. That there is a problem is demonstrated by the fact that there was also a retired former Enel employee inside the Bargi plant: if he was needed it means that external companies do not reach an adequate level of professionalism”.
