As May Day celebrations fill the streets with festive marches and labour union protests across French cities today, a darker truth boils below the surface. In a country often applauded for its strong labour protections, two workers die each day due to job-related accidents, according to the latest national health insurance figures. Many worried observers say the numbers don’t even come close to capturing the full extent of these fatal mishaps.
Although Matthieu Lépine is a history and geography teacher at a high school outside of Paris, his X feed does not reflect his daytime job. At least not this one. His posts almost always highlight incidents of work-related deaths.
There is the 31-year-old bicycle delivery driver who died after being run over by a car. There is the father of three who fell to his death on his first day working at a construction site. There is the worker who was buried under rubble while digging a trench.
“These are not isolated incidents,” says Lépine, who is also the author of the 2023 book “L’hécatombe invisible – enquête sur la mort au travail” (“Invisible Massacre: An Investigation into Death in the Workplace"). “It is a massive phenomenon,” he insists.
Lépine has been sounding the alarm on how widespread work-related deaths are in France for years. Scouring local press, he uncovered more than 100 cases since the start of 2024 alone. In a country that has traditionally championed some of Europe’s strongest worker protection laws and holds raucous May Day rallies every year, the figure is all the more astounding.
Frustrated with the official numbers issued by the national health insurance office (CNAM), Lépine has tasked himself with gathering his own data since 2016 and has published his findings on X since 2019. The latest report by the CNAM came out in 2022 and found that 738 people lost their lives to fatal work accidents that year, amounting to more than two deaths a day. While the findings are alarming, Lépine says they fall short of reality “because the data available is limited”.
Depending on their industry, workers in France do not all benefit from the same health insurance scheme. “Farmers, teachers, construction workers or truck drivers do not declare occupational accidents [or fatalities] to the same scheme,” Lépine explains. The 2022 report by the national health insurance office did not factor in agricultural workers, for example, who are registered with the agricultural social mutual organisation (MSA). “Despite it being a profession that sees some of the most dramatic work-related accidents,” says Lépine.
He is not the only one determined to unveil the scale of work-related deaths in France. Weekly news magazine Politis added up the cases from various health insurance schemes and found that in 2022, a record 900 workers had died from work-related accidents, far more than the 738 declared by the CNAM.
"What I can say for certain is that, in the past 20 years, the number of work-related deaths published by the national health insurance office has not gone down,” says Lépine.
‘Warning signs’
Those most likely to die from work-related accidents in France are blue-collar workers. “They pay the heaviest price,” says sociologist Véronique Daubas-Letourneux, a professor at the French School of Public Health (EHESP), adding that most of these accidents can be avoided.
Such was the case for Alban Millot, who was only 25 years old when he fell to his death after installing solar panels on the roof of a barn in 2021.
“The labour audit concluded that there should have been a scaffolding around the building and that a safety net should have been stretched under the roof. But Alban did not have the necessary protections because his boss refused to provide him with any. All he had was a ladder,” says his bereaved mother, Véronique Millot.
She is now a spokesperson for the Stop à la mort au travail (Stop death at work) Collective, a group of family members whose loved ones have died due to work-related accidents.
Her son’s employer was sentenced to 36 months in prison, 18 of which were suspended, for breaching safety regulations in June 2023. But Alban’s boss appealed the decision and his family is now waiting for a final sentence to be handed down, due to take place on May 22.
"Work is meant to be something fulfilling. We were proud that our son had found a job and was gaining independence. We never imagined that it could cost him his life,” Véronique laments, her throat tightening. “There were warning signs. Someone had left the company because they were afraid of working in those conditions and had alerted the labour inspectorate several times by email. The inspectorate responded saying they would go and check but that because they were swamped, they would not be able to before March 7. Our son died on March 10," Véronique explains.
Workers unions often criticise the lack of labour inspectors. According to union figures, France has less than one inspector for every 10,000 employees and the government is having a hard time finding new recruits.
A deterioration of general working conditions
For Daubas-Letourneux, it is imperative to carry out safety controls and sanction employers who put their workers at risk. But the sociologist explains that the scale of work-related deaths can also be linked to a systemic deterioration of work conditions, largely documented by the French labour ministry.
“Surveys have shown that working conditions have become more difficult, regardless of the sector, and that the pace of work has intensified,” she explains. “Jobs today are characterised by emergency situations and understaffing, neither of which are conducive to a healthy work environment.”
“In many cases of [work-related deaths], we found that outsourcing and subcontracting played a role, especially when it comes to construction sites,” Daubas-Letourneux adds.
Lépine concurs. “Sometimes there are four, five or even six different companies involved,” he says, describing a domino effect in which the risks often land on “the smallest companies, those with the least resources who often have the most precarious and least trained staff”.
“Some companies also want to cut costs,” he explains, “which increases the risk of work-related accidents, because they will often cut back on safety.”
Rise in fatal accidents among young workers
Young workers in France bear the brunt of work-related fatalities. The number of people under 25 who died at work ballooned by 19 percent between 2019 and 2022, according to the national health insurance office. “It is a very strong warning about the dangerous working conditions that young people are exposed to,” deplores Daubas-Letourneux.
“Due to time constraints, young workers on temporary or fixed-term contracts can find themselves facing dangerous work situations with little or no training or support,” she adds.
At a time when the French government is encouraging young people to take on apprenticeship contracts, the rise in fatal accidents among young workers is raising concerns. “Some employers act fairly while others use young workers for cheap or unpaid labour. Apprentices should not be put to work without careful supervision,” warns Lépine.
France, leader of work-related deaths in the EU
According to the French agricultural social mutual organisation, new recruits, temporary staff and self-employed workers from other EU countries are most at risk of work-related deaths. And France has the highest number of work fatalities within the EU, with 4.45 deaths per 100,000 persons employed, according to the European Commission.
Lépine also points out that independent ‘auto-entrepreneurs’ workers in France “are not counted in the data”.
The author and teacher was most shaken by two cases in particular. In 2019, Michel Brahim died after an 18-metre fall while cleaning gutters on the roof of the Versailles police headquarters. He was 68 years old. “Brahim was working to supplement his €700 retirement income,” Lépine sighs. The second case came a few days later, when 19-year-old Franck Page was hit by a truck in the suburbs of Bordeaux. The young delivery driver was bringing a customer their Uber Eats meal. “He was the first delivery driver to die at work,” he says.
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In most cases, work-related deaths occur at the start of a new contract. “When Alban died he had only been on the job for three weeks. He was still on probation,” says his mother, Véronique.
After her son died, Véronique felt very alone. “Little or no information was given to us about how to proceed,” she admits. “We filed a complaint right away but we were kept in the dark. No organisation dedicated to work-related deaths exists in France, and there is little to no psychological support.”
She does recognise, however, that there have been some victories, like being invited to speak about her case with the French labour ministry or at the European Parliament. The collective she joined for bereaved family members also sent out a decree in June 2023 that now obliges French employers to inform the labour inspectorate within twelve hours in the case of a work-related death.
This article has been translated from the original in French.
