To date, there have been four times fewer work accidents on a 2024 Olympic Games construction site than on comparable construction sites, according to the former head of the CGT Bernard Thibault, involved in the Olympic organizing committee. The participation of unions in the organization of the Olympic Games is a “world first”, said Bernard Thibault in an interview published on Saturday in the daily Ouest-France, recalling that “the social question was not one of the concerns of previous editions”.
164 accidents, including 25 serious
The former general secretary of the CGT (1999-2013), who sits on the organizing committee of the Olympic Games and represents the signatories of the social charter, counts to date 164 accidents on all the construction sites of the Olympic Games in France, including 25 serious ones. With a death on a sewage treatment plant site, but which was not “legally an Olympic site”. “When we relate these figures to the hours worked, there were four times fewer accidents on an Olympics site than on comparable sites in France,” explains Bernard Thibault, even if “this is still too much of course”.
The former union official also mentioned the case of undeclared or undocumented workers, “omnipresent on construction sites in France”, with between one and five undocumented workers for every 50 workers on a construction site. For the Paris Olympics, the organizing committee obtained a labor inspection mission, which gave rise to reports, and at least one legal action against one company, the CGC group.
The French example should make it possible to “force the IOC (International Olympic Committee: editor’s note) to better recognize the rights of workers in the organizing country”, underlines Bernard Thibault. Who says he is “in contact with the organizers of the (next) Los Angeles Olympics and the next Football World Cup”. “We are far from the ideal, but there has been progress,” he adds.
Asked about the risks of strikes, he believes that “if we know how to anticipate, there is no reason to have strikes under the pretext that there would be the Olympics in France”. “They will not be a target as such,” he adds. A hearing before the Bobigny industrial tribunal, where ten former undocumented workers have sued construction giants to have their work recognized on the Olympic sites, has just been postponed until March 2024. It mainly pits workers against each other. from Mali to construction giants like Eiffage or Spie Batignolles, as well as eight subcontracting companies.