Falls among roofers, cuts and burns in the kitchen, allergies and tendonitis among hairdressers, even shipwrecks among sailors… “These are the risks of the job” is a phrase that often comes up to justify work accidents in very exposed professions. . “Anyway, we have to do it, work, if we have pain we deal with it, it passes and that’s it”sums up a 27-year-old cook interviewed as part of the SANTPE sociological survey.
Published in August 2022, the study report resuming this survey highlights that in hairdressing, catering and construction, workers in companies with fewer than ten employees are doing worse than what the official data say. “We very quickly saw that there were fewer workplace accidents declared in VSEs, that health was declared good there, whereas paradoxically there are more occupational risks there, and prevention is very poorly developed”raises Emilie Legrand, lecturer in sociology and scientific manager of SANTPE. A discrepancy which is explained by the fact that employees often choose themselves to hide their health problems.
The commission for evaluating the under-declaration of accidents at work and occupational diseases, chaired by a magistrate from the Court of Auditors, estimated in its 2021 report that nearly half of accidents at work were not declared in the private sector, because of dysfunctions of the Health Insurance, and sometimes because of camouflage strategies by employers.
It also notes a lack of information for employees on health and safety at work, and not only in very small companies. Due to a lack of prevention culture in their company, many employees are not aware of the risks to which they are exposed, or are unaware that any injury occurring in the course of work is a work accident which must be declared to the employer under twenty-four hours.
The fear of declaring an AT
“In 2022, there are 37 work accident declarations out of 2,800 agents [de Pôle emploi] in Normandy “, notes Florence Lépine, adviser and CGT delegate of the public operator in Rouen. She compares this figure with the number of assaults, which increased, between 2019 and 2021, by 72% by telephone and 13% in reception areas. “It’s very little, it’s practically only physical accidents and discomfort, and none for burn-out or anxiety attack, because the counselors do not think that a verbal attack is an accident. While this can go as far as death threats. »
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