A temporary worker died on Wednesday morning while unloading a truck delivering to the Decathlon store in the La Madeleine district of Paris. The unions then requested an extraordinary meeting of the French Social and Economic Committee (CSE), as the AFP news agency learned from consistent sources.
“This morning we learned that a temporary worker died in an accident,” the CFDT union said in a statement. The accident occurred with a forklift truck unloading a truck that was supposed to deliver to the business. In an email to the French news agency AFP, the retail company’s management confirmed the fatal accident and expressed their condolences to the family and loved ones.
The store’s team is very affected by this tragedy and a psychological counseling center has been set up, Decathlon said, explaining that an investigation has been launched to determine the causes of the accident and death.
The Paris public prosecutor’s office said on Wednesday evening that it had “initiated an investigation into negligent homicide to the Paris-Centre Commissariat under joint responsibility with the DRIEETS (Direction régionale interdépartementale de l’économie, de l’emploi, du travail et des solidarités)”. which is intended to clarify whether all required safety conditions were met.
“The victim, born in 1988, was working as a temporary worker on his first day of work,” the prosecutor continued, confirming that “initial indications indicate that the accident occurred while unloading a truck.”
The unloading situation was known to be dangerous
The CFDT union was angry and called for an extraordinary meeting of the CSE. The organization said it had warned as recently as Monday of a “serious and imminent danger” involving “the dangerous conditions during the unloading of trucks” supplying the store.
“The goods receiving process is special in La Madeleine as the goods are unloaded on the sidewalk before being taken to the basement in an elevator,” Fernando Da Costa, CFDT representative at Decathlon’s CSE in the Paris area, told AFP.
“This elevator was broken until yesterday,” so a temporary employment agency had to be hired to replace it with a forklift,” he explained. On Wednesday morning, the elevator worked, but the truck’s tailgate did not, so a forklift was used again had to become.
Fernando Da Costa said he hoped to learn more about the details that led to this accident at the extraordinary CSR meeting. “We also want to be sure that everything is put in place to ensure that these goods receipt conditions no longer occur.” (AFP)
[Erklärung der Redaktion]: The Social and Economic Committee (CSE: Comité Social et Economique) has replaced the employee representatives elected within society in France since 2018. It brings together all employee representatives (IRP), employee delegates (DP), the works council (EC) and the Health, Safety and Working Conditions Committee (CHSCT) in one body.
This translated and edited post previously appeared on FashionUnited.fr.