Safety picture fudged on Olympics work
Data compiled by France omit many migrants
PARIS — French President Emmanuel macron promised to build the Summer Olympics safely, free of the construction hazards and migrant worker abuses that tarnished soccer’s 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
months before the games begin in Paris, he declared success. “We are living up to the commitments we made,” macron said in February.
government data shows fewer than 200 injuries at Olympics sites over a four-year construction blitz. And no deaths.
But inspection records and other documents show that Olympic sites have been more dangerous than organizers have let on, with some projects failing to meet basic safety standards. When immigrants in the country illegally are hurt on the job, workers and officials say, the injuries are often handled off the books, all but guaranteeing that they will not show up in government statistics.
Even fatal accidents of laborers working legally are sometimes omitted from the Olympic count. When two workers died on a subway project that macron’s former transportation minister called “the lifeline of the Olympics,” their deaths were not included in the total.
When a truck fatally crushed a man who was helping build a wastewater basin to allow swimming events to be held in the Seine, his death was omitted from the Olympic count. “Administratively, it was put in another category,” said Paul Duphil, the executive secretary of France’s quasi-government construction safety watchdog.
that is because of how the French government defines an Olympic site. Accidents at the Olympic village count, but not at the Pleyel tower, a nearby skyscraper that has been transformed into a luxury hotel for the games. Work at the media center counts, but construction of a gigantic footbridge that the local government says is “at the heart of the Olympic project” does not.
Workers, union officials, and some labor inspectors say all of this is part of macron’s effort to make France sparkle in the Olympic spotlight. “It allows them to say that France isn’t Qatar,” said Simon Picou, a union representative for government labor inspectors.
Documents, along with interviews with government officials, inspectors, and more than a dozen workers, show that immigrants in the country illegally played a larger and riskier role in delivering the Olympics than the macron administration acknowledges. Workers in France without legal permission described being pushed to do dangerous jobs for long hours without safety glasses, harnesses, or other gear.
In interviews, the workers described being encouraged by their employer not to report their injuries or see doctors. Several said they have plenty of time to hide or flee before inspections at Olympic sites.
“the bosses always tell us to run,” said Daouda tounkara, a 33-year-old worker from mali who worked on the Pleyel tower.