A 55-year-old man was killed in a labor-related accident on Monday, when he fell from the machine he was on and was cleaning railway lines in Idomeni, northern Greece. The man, an employee of an engineering company. is the latest victim of workplace-related accidents in Greece that hit a record in 2023.
In 2022, 104 people were killed and 140 were seriously injured in work accidents:
“We are heading for a doubling of people killed at work and if we include the data provided by ELSTAT, according to which we had 46 deaths in 2018, 51 in 2019, 41 in 2020 and 31 in 2021, then we are talking about a proliferation of people who lose their lives in the workplace,, Andreas Stoimenidis, head of European Unions at the European Organization for Health and Safety at Work (OHS) said during a press conference on Tuesday.
The “human sacrifice” in the workplaces has alarmed the European institutions and Collective bodies in Europe, he pointed out.
He recalled that every day or every other day there is a labor accident and stressed that a labor accident “used to be a very big issue in the past, but today it has come to be considered as something completely normal. But it isn’t. Health and safety at work are fundamental rights.”
And while the country is breaking one black record after another, legislation is being pushed against these data, which actually increases the risks at work.
Stoimenidis reminded the new Labor Law of September 2023 that “gives Greek employees the …right to work up to 13 hours per day in different employers and zero-hours contracts when they are questioned in Europe.
Among others, he mentioned distortions of labor rights such as allowing uncertified workers to perform electrical works
There have been so far no meaningful measures in the legislation for the protection of health and safety at work.
I don’t think health and safety is very high in the thoughts of the average Greek worker.
I once saw a worker fitting lights to 12 m high beams in a building. He was standing astride a rickety wooden ladder on a very narrow 8 m high scaffolding on wheels. When he had finished one fitting he “walked” the ladder along the plank to the next position while still astride it. When he had finished the beam two colleagues pushed the scaffold to the next beam with him still astride the ladder. In case people don’t know what I mean by “walked” he leaned to one side so most of his weight was on one leg and kicked the legs together. He then leaned the other way and kicked them apart again. Repeat until you reach your destination…or fall to your death.
On another occasion I handed a pair of my own safety glasses to a worker who was grinding a steel bar with an angle grinder. The metal sparks were flying straight into his face. He put them down on the bench and carried on without them.