A few hours into the new year were enough for the first death at work: on January 3, in the morning, in Lamezia Terme. The worker who lost his life thus becomes a number that is added to one of the statistics that will continue to inexorably increase, day after day, in 2025. The same statistic that the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, referred to in his end-of-year speech: «Words of disdain can no longer be enough: we need to act, with responsibility and severity. Fatal accidents, all of them, can and must be prevented.”
But the person who lost his life, Francesco Stella, a 38-year-old worker, did not deserve to become a symbol: the first white death of the year. He was working in the industrial area of San Pietro Lametino, in a company that deals with profiles. He would have fallen from the scaffolding, from a height of about six metres. The magistrate on duty, police personnel and labor inspectors arrived on site.
According to Uil Calabria, it is necessary to open a table as soon as possible to discuss working conditions. The local secretary, Mariaelena Senese, said that “every life lost is an unacceptable wound for the dignity of work and for the future of our region”.
The dead in Calabria
In fact, the data on Calabria are merciless: the official ones, certified by Inail, are updated at the end of October 2024. But they already speak of an increase in accident reports of 2 percent compared to the previous year.
We will have to wait some more time to have the definitive balance, which will allow a more precise comparison, without the risks of the distorting effect of peaks which may even be random.
Yet, for some time the unions have been explaining that even just one death at work would be excessive and that we must aim to bring that number down to zero. Just as Mattarella said, “fatal accidents, all of them, can and must be prevented.”
Data in Italy
From this point of view, 2025 is therefore already a bad year: now it can only get worse. The death of the worker in Lamezia Terme has become a national news story precisely because it is the first. But from now on there will be more. Almost always, their stories will only be reported by local newspapers: a continuous drip, which is still far from the “zero” we would like to aim for.
Let's take some data from previous years: reports of accidents at work in the whole of 2023 were 585,356, in the first ten months of 2024 they were already 491,439 (up 0.4 percent compared to the same period of the previous year).
There were 1,041 reports of fatal accidents in 2023, from January to October 2024 there were already 890. In other words, a minimum of plausibility is enough to believe that the Lamezia Terme case will only be the first of a long series.
What to do
But what can be done to stop this counting? «The national construction contract provides specific rules for safety on construction sites, establishing obligations for the employer including the mandatory training of workers; the supply of personal protective equipment (PPE); supervision and control by safety representatives”, explains Simone Celebre, general secretary of the Calabrian section of Fillea, the Italian Federation of construction workers of the CGIL.
«Furthermore, the contract provides specific rules for the use of scaffolding, machinery and in the execution of work at heights. It also establishes specific obligations for the prevention of accidents, considering the high danger of construction site work. Not applying it – claims Celebre – is not just a question of legal responsibility. It's life or death for the workers.”
Obviously it is still early to understand what happened in Lamezia Terme: the investigations will clarify whether there is any responsibility. However, if we broaden the discussion to the thousand deaths that occur at work every year, it is natural to ask how many of these could have been avoided. And the count is not even complete: injuries must also be considered, especially disabling ones. And sometimes people die not on a construction site, but on the way from home to work.
On the road
Taking stock of the past year is Emidio Deandri, national president of Anmil, the association of disabled and disabled workers. «For now we can only make a provisional assessment», he explains, while waiting for the definitive data collected by Inail. «But from a more in-depth study, carried out by our technicians, some important particularities emerge in the accident dynamics of 2024 which are not reflected in the statistics of previous years».
«The growth in accidents in the first 10 months of 2024 is due exclusively to the increase in commuting accidents (on the home-work-home journey) and those of foreign workers», explains Deandri. «The increase of 2,000 reports, in fact, is nothing other than the result of the balance between the growth of 4,000 commuting accidents and the decrease of 2,000 which occurred at work. In practice, net of commuting accidents, we would have a drop of 0.5 percent.”
«A similar situation occurs for fatal accidents which in 2024 recorded a decrease of 15 deaths occurring at work (from 672 to 657 with a variation of minus 2.2 percent) and an increase of 33 commuting deaths (from 196 we reach 233 with a variation of more than 18.8 percent)”.
Deaths at work
During the holidays, in various areas of Italy, Anmil inaugurated special Christmas trees, built with workers' helmets. It's a symbolic way to keep attention even during the holidays. But, once again, it was the news that brought the topical discussion back.
In December, at the Calenzano fuel depot, in the province of Florence, five workers died in an explosion and 26 others were injured. In November, in a fireworks factory in Herculaneum, three young people died on their first day of work. In May, five workers died in Casteldaccia from inhaling hydrogen sulphide without protection. In April, in the province of Bologna, seven workers died in the explosion at Enel's hydroelectric power plant.
The script is different every time, but it always has a point in common: the protagonist is almost always a person, whose name is often forgotten, who needed to work to live and who stopped living because of work.
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