A-Infos (en) Italy: FdCA statement - "May Day, for today's martyrs" [it]

When work kills......death becomes a number and life becomes a sacrifice on the 
altar of capitalism and exploitation
For capitalism, workers are nothing more than living numbers - production 
numbers, redundant numbers, mobile numbers, numbers to be cut down through job 
losses. And they are still just numbers even when they die at work. Exploited 
lives and broken lives are only a cost. A number. Now, Italy's national agency 
for insurance against workplace injuries, INAIL, has announced that in 2006 
there were a total of 1,280 workplace deaths, with a sharp rise in the figures 
for women and non-EU citizens. These numbers tell us that in 2006 a total of 
1,115 people died in the industrial sector (280 in construction alone), 114 in 
agriculture and 11 civil servants. The number of women dying at work has 
increased: 103 in 2006 as against 88 the previous year. And the numbers of 
non-EU citizens dying at work in Italy has also been increasing over the past 4 
  years.

Numbers. Statistics. The statistics tell us that on average 4 people die at
work every day as a result of accidents, but they do not tell us about the
deaths which go unreported because the workers involved, be they men or women,
Italians or immigrants, are moonlighting in undeclared, illegal, clandestine
jobs, part of the hidden economy. Or about the workers who are involved in road
accidents because they are so tired due to driving or working long hours. Or
the victims of exposure to carcinogens or toxic elements, whose illnesses are
rarely - if ever - linked to their work.

When the culprit is work, a loophole in Article 2087 of the Civil Code or in
Law 626 [1)] can always be found to protect this serial killer. But it is plain
for all to see: the culprit is the organization of labour and its
de-regulation; the intensification of the exploitation of labour and blackmail
on the part of those who would like the laws designed to protect workers'
safety to be relaxed or repealed, even depenalised. This killer also maims:
there are hundreds of thousands of workplace injuries every year (INAIL
reported 938,613 in the year 2004).

In Italy, as in the rest of the world, behind these workplace deaths and
accidents there lie greater interests which tend to dump the cost of the
consequences of these deaths, injuries and work-related illnesses onto the
collectivity. They are of course human costs, but also enormous economic costs:
every year 4% of the world's GNP is lost die to costs deriving from accidents,
deaths and illnesses linked to the workplace - a figure which is 20 times that
of what is spent on development aid.

The human cost, however, is incalculable! It is a slaughter on a worldwide
scale. The International Labour Organization (ILO) registered around 2.2
million work-related deaths for the year 2005, of which "only" 350,000 were the
result of accidents (of these, as many as 60,000 were in the construction
sector). All the others - that's 1,700,000 people - were victims of
work-related illnesses (asbestos alone still counts for about 100,000 deaths a
year). And most of the mortal injuries estimated by the ILO occur in China
(around 90,000), other Asian countries (76,866) and India (40,133). Over the
next 15 years there will be an increase both in the number of young people
(15-24) and older people (the over-60s) joining the workforce and it is these
groups which tend to suffer the greatest incidence of workplace accidents.

Prevention, protection, safety and health in the workplace are costs which
cannot be offloaded onto the national labour contracts for the various
categories. They must be borne by employers. Workplace Safety Monitors must be
introduced into every workplace - if necessary in an autonomous, self-managed
way by the workers themselves. These Monitors must be protected and safeguarded
from blackmail by the bosses and be in direct contact with local health
officers. Local health officers must be charged with recognizing workplace
injuries and work-related diseases and set up an observatory of workplace
accidents which includes every local authority area and every workplace.

But above all we need to continue our criticism of capitalism as a system of
production, and systematically denounce exploitation and its lethal effects on
the health and lives of the proletariat of Italy and the whole world. We must
organize specific struggles on the theme of safety in order to fight the
various processes that lie at the root of the rise in risk factors - from
privatization to outsourcing, from de-qualification of duties to increases in
the workrates in production units.

If we are no longer to die from work, but live from it, heartfelt appeals and
crocodile tears are not enough. Nor is hoping that rules and regulations are
observed or that the bosses will act honestly. In every workplace we have to
win back our dignity and the awareness that it is up to us to defend our
rights. The workers themselves must struggle and be united in that struggle.


Federazione dei Comunisti Anarchici
27th April 2007

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[1] The article of the Italian Civil Code and corresponding law which oblige
employers to provide a safe working environment for workers.
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