Milan protest draws attention to spiraling deaths at work

(10 May 2024)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Milan, Italy - 10 May 2024
1. Various of piazza in Milan with cardboard coffins laid out
2. Wide of protesters
3. SOUNDBITE (Italian) Enrico Vezza, Secretary General of the UIL (labor union), Lombardy Section:
“Because today in Lombardy we have put out 172 (coffins), that is the sum of workers, the men and women, who lost their lives while on the job in this region in the year 2023. If you think that already, since the beginning of 2024, we are up to 41 people who have died on the job, we believe that this is unacceptable. Today is not a holiday, today is a day of anger, of anguish because behind every coffin that we have put out here, there are first names and last names and there are also the families who have lost their loved ones while they were at work.”
4. Wide or poster showing the number of workers who have died working since 2018, reading (Italian) “Zero is still very far away”
5. Wide of coffins
6. Wide of coffins and the union's flag
7. Various of coffins
STORYLINE:
Protesters in Milan filled a piazza with over 100 cardboard coffins on Friday, representing workers who have died while working in Italy.
The protest was organized by a labor union demanding the Italian government does more to protect Italian workers.
There were a total of 172 coffins laid out in the piazza, the number of deaths in Italy’s northern Lombardy region in 2023.
“Today is a day of anger, of anguish because behind every coffin that we have put out here there are first names and last names,” explained UIL union leader Enrico Vezza.
"Since the beginning of 2024, we are up to 41 people who have died on the job, we believe that this is unacceptable," he added.
The union’s campaign is titled Zero Deaths.
A sign at the center of the piazza showed the number of deaths for workers killed while working since 2018 with a peak of 1,709 in 2020, when the COVID pandemic sent figures spiralling upwards in Italy.
Earlier this month, five workers were killed in an accident at a sewage treatment plant near the southern Italian city of Palermo in Sicily.
The deaths are the latest in a series of workplace fatalities across Italy which have fueled anger among workers and trade unions.
In April, seven workers were killed by an explosion that collapsed and flooded several levels of an underground hydroelectric plant in northern Italy.
In mid-February, five constructions workers died after a concrete beam and slabs collapsed at a supermarket building site in the city of Florence.
AP video shot by Luca Bruno
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