When it comes to workplace accidents, France is a bad student, with two deaths every day. Minister of Labor Catherine Vautrin brings together prevention organizations on April 29 before, undoubtedly, announcements from the Prime Minister in the coming weeks.
Behind these accidents, there are lives, families. RTL met Johanna, a woman who lost her husband in a work accident. On April 3, 2020, her husband Alexandre had been working in an industrial laundromat in Ile-de-France for three years as a maintenance technician when the accident occurred.
“The gendarmerie knocked on the door to inform me that Alexandre had had an accident and that unfortunately the emergency services had not succeeded in resuscitating him,” she says. And I don’t know any more. I had this feeling of my body burning from the inside. We had two children, my son 4 years old at the time and my daughter 4 months old. How do you want them to be built? I would later find out that in fact he had fallen into a dryer and the dryer started up again.”
Johanna is convinced that this accident could have been avoided with more prevention. “Safety, prevention, they absolutely did not exist,” she laments. Alexandre always told me: ‘but you don’t realize, I can fall, I can hurt myself’.” “I think that most French people are completely unaware of the risk we take at work,” she assures. Most fatal accidents at work can be avoided just through prevention..”
Alexander’s enterprise was not condemned. The judicial police investigation was closed without further action; even today, criminal liability has not been established. It is impossible to know if it was Alexandre who forgot to activate the security mechanism or if there was a failure on the part of the company. The labor inspectorate nevertheless reopened an investigation in February. The Melun prosecutor must give his conclusions in the coming weeks.
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