Mandated by GL Events, the company in charge of assembling the stands for the temporary sites of the Paris Olympic Games, the professionals were judged to be in “serious and imminent danger” of falling from a great height, reports Mediapart. First construction site suspended on March 8 for a period of six weeks, that of the future equestrian stadium, within the gardens of the Palace of Versailles, we learned from the Team. The labor inspectorate required the implementation of “arrangements ensuring the safety of workers”, before reauthorizing the opening of the site on April 18.
At Place de la Concorde, which will host the urban stadium where the BMX and skateboarding events will be organized, the construction site was interrupted “for a little more than 3 weeks by a ban on the assembly of the stands”, from March 14 to April 9, specifies Mediapart. As for the ephemeral stadium of the Eiffel Tower, ground for beach volleyball and blind football events, “the assembly of a stand was stopped for two weeks, from April 16 to 30”.
We also learn from the regional and interdepartmental directorate of the economy, employment, work and solidarity (Drieets), interviewed by Mediapart, that “more than a hundred work stoppages were taken during the construction phase of the new Olympic venues. For its part, the Games organizing committee indicated that these projects “were never stopped in their entirety” and that “the timetable for setting up the sites was not delayed in any way”.
GL Events, for its part, issued a press release on April 24 in which it assured that “these temporary interruption procedures are extremely common” and promised that there should be no “reference to possible dangers”. “To L’Équipe, the company had mentioned “an adjustment to the methodology” of its sites, denying any endangerment of employees on the site”, comments Mediapart.
While GL Events denies any standoff with the labor inspectorate, a member of the services relates a completely different story to Mediapart: “The operating mode was clearly not suitable. Already, no worker was working with a basket, and they were all in difficult and often dangerous positions, balancing on metal structures, secured by harnesses, clinging and unhooking to “lifelines” as they climbed.” “Place de la Concorde, the colleagues carried out the inspection one day after the start of the construction site, and some guys were already at a height of 7 meters, continues the inspector. The ropes holding them were not all adjusted adequately: if someone fell 3 or 4 meters, he was not at all sure that he would not crash to the ground…”.
Another point to mention, GL Events applied to the Versailles administrative court for summary proceedings on March 25 to contest the cessation of work in the castle gardens, and was dismissed on April 11. “The employees who worked on the assembly of the unhooked part were, some of them, at a height estimated between 19 and 20 meters. Some of them were located on boards which were not attached to the structure, and they were therefore likely to slip, tip or fall. […] No element consolidating the solidity of the harnesses, the only means of protection, could be provided during the inspection or subsequently”, justify the judges in a document obtained by Mediapart.
The labor inspectorate remains on edge because there is still the assembly in mid-May of the stands “to welcome the public of the opening ceremony on the Seine, all along the 12 kilometers of the low quays bordering the river” as well as ” the dismantling of all these ephemeral structures, once the Games are over”, recalls Mediapart.
