After a work accident, disrupted lives and unanswered questions

One morning in 2013, Pascal, then a maintenance agent, went to work. The same day, he lost the use of his legs, After falling from four meters high. Shedding light on these lives turned upside down by a workplace accident, on the occasion of the 21st World Day for Safety and Health at Work, this Sunday, April 28, 2024.

“I stayed four weeks, almost, or five in a coma. So I have no memory, I don’t remember anything. I remember when I woke up there, and then at first, well, it’s a bit in the clouds, time to resurface”says Pascal, in this month of April 2024.

In his house in Deux-Sèvres, this former maintenance worker is keen to show photos of his workplace, where one morning in 2013, his employer asked him to cold clean the condensers. “It was cold, I went down to have a coffee in the workshop and came back up. LThe maintenance manager gave a demonstration. The first year I did it, it had to be from underneath. And there, they took photos again, to say that you had to lie down underneath and scrub, that’s totally false. We had to go underneath.”describes Pascal.

During the maneuver, he fell four meters. At the time, only 44 years old, he had just suffered a work accident and lost the use of his legs.

A long period of rehabilitation followed in a center in Niort, to learn how to “rebuild your muscles already because we not’had more muscles and more strength, and to do the transfers too”between the armchair and the bed for example.

Today, his entire life, personal and professional, remains turned upside down. Occupational medicine declared him 100% disabled, a status which entitles him to monthly compensation. “I do not have a choice. It’s the same, cleaning ladies are a CAugust, this does notis not given. Without paying attention to the end of the month, he do not step aside“, he explains.

If we give up, we won’t succeed. It’s hard to take, but you have to deal with it.

Pascal

Invalid, victim of a work accident

In addition to the financial aspect, every daily gesture had to be rethought. “HAS every time I go outside, I need someone. Supposition, a simple thing is to go shopping in supermarkets. Ocan’t push the chair and shopping cart, and catch all the products on the shelves. And to unpack everything again when you get to the checkout and load it back into the car and unload it back is huge.” Difficult, if not almost impossible, to go to the bank for example, or to move on the sidewalks.

Pascal also had to do work on his house, “redo the bathroom,mchange the angles of the corridor to be able to pass. Because in the house, the corridors, it’s not very large.”

His accident was, according to him, due to poor safety conditions. “HASSo, yes, I blame them. Because there are tragedies that we could avoid. This happened to me on the condensers but it could very well arrive on other workstations, even indoors, just for packaging”he laments.

We’re just numbers in there, in big companies.

Pascal

Victim of a work accident

A lack of consideration on the part of his former employer deeply hurt him: “We not’is just numbers in there in big companies. When everything is going well, it’s going well, when it’s not going well, it’s no longer going well.”

According to the Regional Directorate of the Economy, Employment, Labor and Solidarity, in a report published in 2023, 66,697 workplace accidents took place in New Aquitaine in 2019.

“And since 2019, we have seen a increase, because the Covid had put a stop. There are a lot of accidents in precarious professions, among temporary workers, fixed-term contracts, construction.”describes Laurent Brillaud, lawyer and secretary general of FNATH 79 (National Federation of Work Injured and Disabled Persons).

But problem according to him: “There are many more work accidents than that, due to under-declaration of work accidents and illnesses, to pay less contributions. There are also accidents not recognized by the funds, where the materiality of the facts has not been proven, for example.”

The FNATH of Deux-Sèvres, with 4,000 members, supports victims of work accidents and their families to help them obtain civil compensation. “Every year, we support 350 and 400 files per year with 80% success rate”explains Laurent Brillaud. “Not everyone goes to court, before the social center of the judicial court. We help them to assess the various damages, and to obtain correct compensation under the law.”

Work accidents, like occupational diseases, are governed by a law of 1898. Since then, there has been no legislative development, even if things are starting to move on the judicial side. “Work victims are the only victims of bodily injury, even in the event of inexcusable fault on the part of the employer, to receive lump sum compensation, unlike other traffic accidents with a responsible third party, who receive total compensation”continues the lawyer. “For example, if a patient is contaminated with hepatitis C in the hospital, everything will be taken care of, the suffering, the aesthetics, the arrangement of the car and the house. For a nurse, in the same case, the annuity will be much lower.”

The conviction of the employers is for the FNATH an additional argument to obtain compensation. “S“there is a criminal conviction, it is much easier on a civil level to have a fault recognized”, adds Laurent Brillaud. “And Pthe sooner we have the file, it’s better. If someone comes to see us two years later, it’s complicated to find proof, photos, testimonies.”

If there had been no security lapse, my husband would still be here.

Lea

Wife of a road accident victim

Added to these obstacles is the length of legal proceedings. Léa (not her real name, editor’s note) lost her husband in a work accident in 2021. “He was found sat his workstation. He was stuck and he fractured the rock. I can’t tell you more.”she says. “QWhen they found him, he was resuscitated by a firefighter volunteer who was on site. They brought in the Samu And they not’have not could THE save.” The exact circumstances of the accident are still unknown to this day.

Léa blames breaches of security conditions. “Llawyer told me that if I had to remember only one thing, it is that if there is Had there been no security breach, my husband would still be there. So you can imagine when someone tells you that, the anger.” She pauses and then continues.

My husband lost his life at his workplace, but they also destroyed other lives nearby.

Léa decides to file a complaint in September 2021, and encounters the incomprehension of a gendarme, subsequently removed from the investigation, and dry relations with the company. “They were very present at the time, even, par the following. I’ve had A interview with them which meant a lot to me perturbede psychologically. And there, I took a step back from them. There he is y has things thatwe can not afford. It was too far” she denounces.

After a first trial before the criminal court, Léa would like the legal proceedings to come to an end, because for more than three years, she and her two sons have been “in survival mode”. “For us, it was too late, the tragedy had happened, it was too late, but if we can, on our small scale, if we can make employers aware that‘they must take care of their employeesLprotect yourself,pbecause without their employees, they would be nothing.”

“It’s productivity above all, safety rules are shunted or squizzed, and then in some companies, there is no prevention. It’s like someone who is behind the wheel of a car, with the highway code, but he does what he wants.” says Laurent Brillaud. “It is not logical that two people die every day in France in a work accident”concludes Laurent Brillaud. “And on the civilian level, the FNATH is systematically obliged to go to court to obtain better compensation. If everything went well, we wouldn’t need to help our members.”