Toyota Bologna Explosion, 8-Hour Strike Tomorrow. Unions: “It Was Not Accident”

After the explosion at Toyota in Bologna that caused the death of two workers, the unions have called an 8-hour strike for Friday, October 25. And Fiom has announced now that it will be a civil party in the trial

BOLOGNA – Eight hours of strike tomorrow in Bologna and the request that safety be placed at the center of the dialogue with institutions and industrialists at the metropolitan level. After yesterday’s tragedy in the Toyota warehouse, which cost the lives of their colleagues Fabio and Lorenzo, the metalworkers of Cgil, Cisl and Uil are raising the alarm again on the conditions of safety in the workplace, regardless of the specific case “where the procurement chain has nothing to do with it”. Out of a “sense of responsibility”, given the road conditions due to the consequences of the flood, no procession or protests in the historic center (there will be one in front of the company instead) which would multiply the movement of people, but mourning drapes in the companies displayed starting today. “It was not a tragic fatality, I say already that at least as Fiom we will constitute ourselves as a civil party in the trial. But we need to understand how to prevent episodes of this type,” says Fiom secretary Simone Selmi during the press conference called this morning in Cgil.

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Accidents, he adds, “occur daily in all companies, and are reported. The point is what companies do to avoid them. In the case of Toyota, those in charge will establish what happened, but we cannot think that in the digital age episodes of this type will still happen”. Today, Selmi adds, “we are in a safety emergency in the workplace, we must raise the level of attention but above all decide what to implement starting from the Bologna area”. For this reason, the unions are asking for the convening of the metropolitan table on safety, which includes not only local authorities but also the Prefect and representatives of industrialists. Investments in safety are needed, the union underlines, “because we cannot think that metalworkers cannot go home in the evening”.

Strikes are always needed “because we must not get used to deaths and injuries”, warns Massimo Mazzeo, secretary of the Fim-Cisl. In the case of Toyota “we are not in the procurement chain – underlines the Fim representative – but this shows that even multinationals are not free from risks, who carried out the risk assessment, assessed the consequences that an explosion like that could have had? It makes me angry when people talk about fatality”. The unions also ask for a “more responsible” attitude from Confindustria, given that we still have no national answers to our requests on safety”.
Roberto Ferrari of the Uilm secretariat, for his part, points out that the Toyota group “has always invested. If someone has made a mistake, justice will take its course, but what can be done is to improve relations, the company must have more trust and greater involvement of union representatives in safety, and this is the issue for which the strike scheduled for today was called. The reports of the RLS on safety must be listened to”. The strike at Toyota, the unions point out, concerned ergonomics, therefore the prevention of occupational diseases, not the immediate risk of serious injuries. So “it has nothing to do with what happened yesterday”, Selmi emphasizes.

LANDINI: “ABSOLUTE INADEQUACY ON SAFETY AND HEALTH”

Yesterday’s accident at Toyota Handling in Borgo Panigale in Bologna, with two dead and 11 injured, “confirms the absolute inadequacy that exists on the issue of health and safety, which continues to be considered a cost and not a fundamental priority. In addition to this very serious accident; yesterday there was also another death, in the construction sector. There is now an average of three deaths a day and it has been going on for years. Safety is an investment in prevention that must be taken care of at every level”. Thus the general secretary of the Cgil, Maurizio Landini, on yesterday’s explosion at Toyota Handling in Borgo Panigale, with two workers dead and 11 injured, arriving today at the Biennale dell’economia cooperativa in Bologna.

CAMUSSO (PD): STRIKE TOMORROW, FATALITY DOES NOT EXIST

“With deep dismay and concern we learned of the very violent explosion that occurred yesterday at a Toyota Material Handling plant in Bologna. Then the confirmation of the tragedy: two workers dead and more than a dozen injured, two of whom are still in very serious condition conditions. And finally the anger, listening to the testimonies of the unions who had already proclaimed a two-hour strike for today to ask for greater safety in the factory and those of some workers who declared that in that plant ‘there are always problems’. I join in the condolences and express my sincere closeness to colleagues, families, and to the entire Bologna area that is suffering yet another massacre at work a few months after the Suviana accident. Tomorrow, October 25, the territorial unions of the metalworking sector have proclaimed a general strike for the whole day to denounce that the daily massacres to which we are forced to witness cannot be normalized. Daily ‘fatality’ does not exist, and we cannot speak of an ‘accident’ at work if it is known, as in this case, that the company was lacking in terms of compliance with safety procedures, as had already been denounced by the unions several times”. Thus in a note the senator of the Democratic Party Susanna Camusso.