Fatal workplace accidents have increased by 22.8 percent in the first half of 2022 in the Valencian Community compared to 2021, while the total number of claims has registered an increase of 6.3%, as reported by the CCOO PV union. During the first six months of the year in the autonomy there have been 43 fatal occupational accidents, 35 during working hours and eight on the go.
Given these figures, CCOO PV has called for a specific shock plan and the development of “urgent measures” to alleviate a “devastating situation that is raging in the most precarious population.”
According to the union, the accident rate statistics, published this week by the Ministry of Labour, confirm the consolidation of the upward trend in occupational accidents in the Valencian Community. However, the official and closed data for the month of July are still pending, in which fatal accidents due to heat stroke must be included.
The technique of the Occupational Health Cabinet of CCOO PV, Mila Cano, has highlighted that the data is necessary to evaluate, analyse, propose and above all “correct and eliminate legal breaches”, but “they cannot make us forget that, behind each number, there is a person who has lost their health, and in the worst case their life.”
The main causes of this increase in accidents are, according to CCOO PV, “the lack of specific preventive measures, lack of incorporation of preventive management in the organisation of the company, formal and documented prevention that does not avoid risks or damages, and a lack of business investment in improving the production model and working conditions, as well as of the administration, promoting its Technical Institutes and the Labour and Social Security Inspection itself”.
Cano maintains that “real” participation should be given to workers and prevention delegates to improve performance in their workplaces, because “nobody better than them and they know what is happening, and how to improve it”.
