[Occupational accidents in temporary work]

In 2000 in Italy about 470,000 workers found jobs provided by Temporary Work Agencies, i.e., more than twice the number in 1999. Temporary Work is an expanding phenomenon since it well suits the flexibility requirements of business: 77% of Temporary Work is in the manufacturing industry, involving mostly unskilled workers. The young age, low level of qualification, poor training, and lack of knowledge of the working environment are factors that can favour occupational accidents. There are studies that relate the frequency of labour accidents to the level of training and job experience. There are no data in the literature about occupational accidents during temporary work. Our study concerns sixteen temporary work Agencies that employed more than 250,000 manual workers in 2000. From the occupational accident registers of these agencies, we analysed all accidents concerning manual workers employed during 2000, with reference to: the number of accidents with up to three days prognosis, age, sex, nationality, prognosis pattern and cause. The agencies supplied data regarding the number of hours worked during 2000. We considered 5259 accidents: the overall frequency index (FI) was 92.1, with a considerable difference between the three main agencies (87.5) and the others. The mean age accident was 27.8 years, mean duration of sick leave 13.7 days, and the main causes were work tools (51.5%); 76% of the accidents concerned unskilled manual workers. The above indexes are definitely higher than those provided by INAIL (italian compulsory insurances) for the metalworking (38.1), construction (47.7) and mining (58.8) sectors during 1997. There is evidence that temporary work is related to an increased risk of occupational accidents. Further studies are required to confirm this evidence.