2024 Olympics: four times fewer workplace accidents than on comparable sites, says Bernard Thibault

If several tragedies on the construction sites of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris have raised concerns about worker safety, an important voice instead wants to highlight the progress made. Involved in the organizing committee of the Olympic Games, the former head of the CGT Bernard Thibault affirms in an interview with Ouest-France this Sunday that there have been to date much fewer work accidents on construction sites. Games than on similar construction sites.

“To date, there have been 164 accidents, 25 of which were serious. To this must be added a death on the construction site of a sewage treatment plant which depends on the City of Paris without legally being an Olympic construction site, indicates the former general secretary of the CGT (1999-2013), who sits within of the Olympic organizing committee and represents the signatories of the social charter. It's still too much, of course. But when we relate these figures to the hours worked, there were four times fewer accidents in this program than on sites of comparable size in France.”

The former union official also mentions in this interview the case of undeclared or undocumented workers, “omnipresent on construction sites in France”, with between one and five undocumented workers for every 50 workers on a construction site. For the Paris Olympics, the organizing committee obtained a labor inspection mission, which gave rise to reports, and at least one legal action against one company, the CGC group.

The French example should make it possible to “force the IOC (International Olympic Committee, Editor’s note) to better recognize the rights of workers in the organizing country,” underlines Bernard Thibault. Who says he is “in contact with the organizers of the (next) Los Angeles Olympics and the next Football World Cup”. “We are far from the ideal but there has been progress,” he adds. Asked about the risks of strikes during the Games, he believes that “if we know how to anticipate, there is no reason to have strikes under the pretext that there would be the Olympics in France”. “They will not be a target as such,” he adds.

A hearing before the Bobigny industrial tribunal, where ten former undocumented workers have sued construction giants to have their work recognized on the Olympic sites, has just been postponed until March 2024. It mainly pits workers against each other. from Mali to construction giants like Eiffage or Spie Batignolles, as well as eight subcontracting companies.