Contractor imprisoned over fatal accident to building worker

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In October 2000, a building contractor in Spain was sentenced to 18 months' imprisonment following the death of a worker in an industrial accident. The court ruled that the contractor committed homicide by failing to fulfil health and safety obligations. The sentence is seen as setting an example in dealing with the very high accident rate in the construction sector.

In 1997, an industrial accident resulted in the death of a 20-year-old labourer on a building site in El Bonillo (Albacete). He died from an electrical shock when operating a concrete mixer on his first day of work on the site. The Trade Union Confederation of Workers' Commissions (Comisiones Obreras, CC.OO) brought a private prosecution against the owner of the construction company concerned because it considered that the most elementary health and safety regulations had been infringed on the site.

This accusation was upheld by the Albacete Court number 2, which delivered its ruling at the end of October 2000. The court sentenced the company owner to 18 months' imprisonment for homicide caused by his failure to fulfil the health and safety regulations. It also disqualified the employer from working as a contractor three years. The ruling states that it has been proven that the contractor "showed a total lack of interest in the risks that the cement mixer could present for the worker and failed to observe the health and safety regulations." The contractor had not fixed the cement mixer's electrical set-up, which had loose wires inside it and had been outside on a rainy day, with leads on the ground and with broken and perished plugs. The worker had not been provided with the gloves and insulating rubber boots that are obligatory according to the health and safety regulations.

The stiff sentence attributing criminal responsibility to the contractor has had a strong impact among employers, trade unions and the legal profession. In the opinion of CC.OO, it is a momentous sentence because it represents a change in the sensitivity of the legal system to the serious problem of industrial accidents.

Many other deaths could be avoided

The young worker who died in El Bonillo was one of the 260 persons who died in industrial accidents in the construction sector in 1997. There have been numerous other deaths since then (270 in 1998 and 294 in 1999) and many of them could also have been avoided. In this context, the trade unions in the construction sector called a general strike in February 2000 "for life and employment" (ES0004282F).

The increase in the number of accidents and deaths in the construction sector seems unstoppable: industrial accidents increased by over 100% between 1994 and 1999; serious accidents by 30%; and deaths by 20%. In 1994, 14% of the workers in the construction sector suffered an industrial accident involving time off work, a percentage which reached 19% in 1999. In the same year, there were 26 fatal accidents and 255 serious accidents for every 100,000 workers in the industry. This is exceptional, even for a country with such a high industrial accident rate as Spain (in 1999, 7% of all workers in Spain suffered an industrial accident and there were nine fatal accidents and 99 serious accidents for every 100,000 workers) (ES9904215F).

Precarious employment and subcontracting are the main reasons for the high levels of accidents and deaths. According to CC.OO figures, 95% of accidents affect workers in precarious jobs and 90% occur in subcontracted firms. Temporary employment in the construction sector is twice the national average: of every three workers, two are on temporary contracts, without taking into account the "false self-employed" and clandestine employment. The construction sector is also characterised by chains of subcontracting, and most construction companies have fewer than five workers. In these circumstances it is easy to see why the accident rate is so high: a job with few rights and poor working conditions is a less safe job. The gravity of the situation is illustrated by the fact that, according to the Association of Industrial Accident Mutual Insurance Companies (Asociación de Mutuas de Accidentes de Trabajo), failure to fulfil the health and safety regulations that have been in force for five years (ES9708216F) is widespread in the construction sector, where 83% of companies have not even carried out the obligatory evaluation of risks.

There are many trade union proposals for dealing with this situation. Some aim to deal with the fundamental problems: in autumn 1999, CC.OO presented a popular legislative initiative to regulate subcontracting in the sector, which was endorsed by 600,000 signatures but has not yet been put before parliament (ES9812193N) (the popular legislative initiative is a procedure provided for under the Spanish constitution that allows ordinary citizens to present proposals directly to parliament if they are endorsed by a certain number of signatures). Other proposals seek to foster a culture of health and safety in companies and to reinforce the role of workers' representatives in this field: the experience of the Expo in Seville, the Olympic Stadium in Barcelona and the extension of the underground railway in Madrid- to mention only a few well-known cases - shows that it is possible to build without accidents when the safety regulations are taken into account from the outset and the trade unions are involved. In some autonomous communities (regions), tripartite agreements have been reached along these lines.

Other proposed measures involve reinforcing mechanisms for inspecting and penalising companies that fail to observe the regulations. Furthermore, CC.OO and the General Workers' Confederation (Unión General de Trabajadores, UGT) are pressing for the Attorney General automatically to investigate all industrial accidents and to take any legal action that is appropriate. Some regional attorney generals have already begun to do this, and the trade unions are bringing private prosecutions in cases of industrial accidents to demand the corresponding criminal responsibility. For this reason, the sentence handed down by the Albacete court is seen as exemplary.

Commentary

After the strike in February, a trade union leader in the construction sector stated: "One has the feeling that accidents in the construction sector will not be taken seriously until three or four employers have been tried for the death of a worker." The courts obviously do not offer the solution to the high industrial accident rate, but sentences such as that handed down in Albacete can and must help to prevent more deaths. (María Caprile, CIREM Foundation)