>>>ANSA/Florence disaster puts work safety back in spotlight

(ANSA) - ROME, FEB 16 - Three workers are dead, three are injured but not in a life threatening condition and two are missing feared dead after a structural collapse in a Florence supermarket construction site on Friday that put the spotlight back on work safety in Italy amid an ongoing spate of fatalities.
    Most of the victims were said to be Romanians.
    The collapse occurred Friday morning at a construction site in Florence, in Via Mariti, on the outskirts of the city, where an Esselunga supermarket is being built, after a retaining wall reportedly collapsed.
    Maurizio Landini, head of Italy's biggest and most leftwing trade union federation CGIL, pointed the finger at the government saying it had seen 1,000 workers die on the job last year and had nonetheless reintroduced allegedly unsafe sub-contracting.
    "In 2023 there were 1,000 deaths at work and often these accidents are produced by the system of subcontracting and the logic of tenders at the highest price," said the CGIL leader.
    "I want to recall that it was this government that amended the procurement code and reintroduced the subcontracting cascade", he said.
    "It is necessary for there to be an immediate reaction and I also think it is necessary to arrive at a general initiative next week, which I will also propose to the other unions, because it is no longer acceptable to continue dying at work." The ruling rightwing League party hit back saying that Landini's words were "disgusting" and that the government had been forced to reintroduce sub-contracting by a threat of infringement proceedings from the European Commission.
    "The words of Maurizio Landini, who comments on the accident at work in Florence also blaming the new procurement code, are disgusting: the secretary of the CGIL ignores that the new rules were wanted by Europe, so much so that Italy was at risk of infringement, and that they have nothing to do with the tragedy," read a League statement.
    "The ideological hatred of the CGIL does not stop even in the face of tragedies," said the second biggest member of Giorgia Meloni's government.
    The general secretary of CISL, Italy's second biggest trade union, Luigi Sbarra, said that "the massacre must end", referring to the spate of fatal workplace accidents in Italy which has continued despite several governments' efforts to stem it.
    "The tragedy at the Florence construction site is a chilling event," he said.
    "We are close to the families of the victims and the injured.
    "But condolences and solidarity are not enough.
    "The massacre must end.
    "While waiting for the judiciary to shed light on the dynamics and responsibilities, one thing is certain: safety in the workplace and safeguarding the lives of workers must be placed at the top of the country's priorities," Sbarra added.
    CGIL and UIL, the third of the Big Three unions, called a two-hour nationwide strike next Wednesday to protest workplace accident deaths.
    The federations, together with the categories of construction and metalworkers - Fillea-Cgil, Feneal-Uil, Fiom-Cgil and Uilm-Uil - invited all other categories to plan mobilisation initiatives and assemblies in workplaces on the same day.
    They called the latest disaster "yet another unbearable tragedy of death at work".
    Sbarra's CISL announced an ongoing national mobilisation and called on the government to reopen talks on how to stop the "slaughter".
    "The Florence tragedy is the umpteenth event in a massacre that must end and which despoils even the most elementary Constitutional rights," said leader Sbarra, announcing assemblies in factors, work sites and offices across the country.
    "We must stop the trail of blood and we must do so now," he said. "The government must immediately restart talks with the unions to build a national strategy together with the employers associations".
    Labour Minister Marina Calderone said the government is weighing more measures on the phenomenon.
    Calling the disaster a "terrible tragedy," she said: "Through the staff of the National Labour Inspectorate and the Carabinieri of the Labour Protection Command present on site in support of the judicial authority, I am following the rescue operations and the search for the missing in order to shed light on what has happened and to take any further action necessary with respect to what has been done so far".
    Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said on social media: "On my own behalf and on behalf of the Government, I express my condolences for the victims of the collapse of a girder on a building site in Florence.
    "I follow with apprehension the evolution of the situation and I thank all those who are participating in the search for the missing and in the rescue operations for the injured.
    "Our deepest condolences to the families affected by this terrible tragedy".
    President Sergio Mattarella sent his condolences, Florence Mayor Dario Nardella said.
    "I give my heartfelt thanks to President Mattarella for voicing to me on the phone his closeness and condolences for the tragedy at the Florence building site," Nardella said on X.
    "I have proclaimed city mourning for tomorrow with a suspension of all events." Nardella, who is in Israel on a visit, said "I will bring forward my return from the Holy land with the first flight I can get on to".
    The Italian victim was named as Luigi Coclite, born in Teramo in Abruzzo in 1964 and resident at Vicarello, a suburb of Collesalvetti near Livorno.
    The identity of the other certified victim, whose body has not yet been recovered from the rubble of the building, has not yet been revealed.
    Neither have the identities of the three workers who are still being sought in the debris.
    The three injured workers, in Florence's Careggi Hospital in a non life threatening condition, all come from Romania and are aged 37,48 and 51. (ANSA).