In 2024, 764 employees died at work according to the Ministry of Labor. Two people per day on average. Today, the trial of the company Paprec is taking place at the court of Nîmes after the death of a 61-year-old employee on May 23, 2025: the waste sorting company is once again summoned before the court in Gard, just a few weeks after another trial, linked to the death of another employee, a 21-year-old worker, in 2023 at the same site.
In case of deaths at work, who is responsible, what do companies risk, and how are penalties enforced?
In France, legal tools exist, but it remains to be seen how they are applied. The labor code is very clear: a serious or fatal workplace accident can result in a 10,000 euro fine and a year of imprisonment. Even a year in prison and 30,000 euros in case of recurrence…
These penalties are specific to the labor code, but there is also the criminal aspect, especially in cases of involuntary manslaughter. The employer then risks a custodial sentence, determined and imposed by the judge, and a fine of several hundred thousand euros for the natural and/or legal person. According to Antony Smith, a European member of La France Insoumise and labor inspector, these penalties often remain theoretical.
In addition to this, there are very long instruction delays, according to family collectives of victims, as well as attempts by some employers to prolong procedures to the maximum. Legally, families also lose a lot of time in identifying the actual contracting party and therefore incriminating the company actually responsible for the accident. Some companies, especially in the construction sector, which is very accident-prone, use multiple levels of subcontractors.
Another way to put pressure on companies would be to tackle the revision of the directive on public markets at the European level to, for example, suggest, as the member of parliament proposes, to permanently exclude definitively condemned and repeat offenders from the European Union’s public markets, a market worth 2,000 billion euros.
