“Where did it go wrong? », asks Franck Refouvelet, elected CGT Orange in Cantal. On October 15, a 30-year-old man was electrocuted by a medium-voltage line in Talizat (Cantal), while working on a telephone line located just below.
This site is distinguished by an incredible situation of cascading subcontracting: Orange subcontracts the work to Eiffage, which itself subcontracts to a subcontractor, which subcontracts to a company in Val-d’Oise where the victim was from. “We can therefore ask ourselves questions about the conditions of intervention of these people. I’m not sure we realize the working conditions of Orange’s subcontractors”insists the elected official, who highlights a similar fatal accident that occurred in February in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence.
Six hundred and forty-five employees in the private sector died in an accident at work – arising out of or in the course of work – in 2021, half of them as a result of illness, reveals the latest report from the National Fund for health insurance (CNAM) published Thursday, November 17. This is less than in 2019, but more than in 2017 or 2018.
48.5 million days off
After decades of progress, the figures have been falling more slowly since 2013: the CNAM has counted 604,565 work accidents in the year (31 accidents with stoppage and/or incapacity for 1,000 employees). This is 12% more than in 2020, 8% less than in 2019 (656,000), and a level similar to 2013 (618,850). The drop between 2019 and 2020/2021 is linked to the use of partial unemployment and teleworking, specifies the CNAM. In construction, transport or agriculture, accidents are more frequent.
Another factor of concern, the accident severity rate is at its highest since 2010: 48.5 million days off work were taken following an accident at work in 2021. This is equivalent to more than 200 000 employees arrested throughout the year. Already considerable, these figures concern only the 19.5 million employees in the private sector.
The seriousness of accidents affects older employees more than younger ones, but less frequently, according to analysis of the Ministry of Labor published in November. Serious and fatal accidents affect workers more, victims of 1,813 serious accidents and 46 fatal accidents per billion hours paid in 2019, compared to 259 and 10 respectively for executives.
A real “social fact” for the sociologist and teacher-researcher at the School of Advanced Studies in Public Health, Véronique Daubas-Letourneux: “The work remains dangerous, and the risk of injury at work is very unevenly distributed. It is the reflection of a work organization where the risks persist: the work intensifies. »
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