Work accidents rise, yet at a slower pace in the province
Work accidents are increasing, but the rise is more modest in Alicante compared with last year. If 2022 closed with more than an 8% increase in accidents among Alicante workers, the period from January to October this year shows a smaller uptick, roughly 3.5%. This modest growth roughly tracks the growth in the number of active professionals, yet remains notably tamer. In contrast, national data for the same period show a 0.6% decline.
Across ten months, the Ministry of Labour and Social Economy recorded 16,243 work accidents with sick leave in the province. These incidents occurred in 13,875 workplaces, affecting a portion of workers, while another 2,368 were classified as travel-related incidents, known as commuting or “travelling” accidents.
Severity-wise, the majority, 16,083 cases, were deemed light and were treated by medical services through the respective insurance systems, with a 3.42% higher rate observed. Only 135 cases were considered serious, marking a 5.4% rise from the previous year. Encouragingly, despite the overall uptick in crashes nationwide, the number of fatalities last year decreased from 30 to 25, indicating improvements in safety measures as the year progressed.
There is a clear call to action: a culture of prevention must continue to take root, particularly in high-risk situations. The sentiment is that no one should lose a life simply because they go to work. This perspective was underscored by Yolanda Díaz, general secretary of the UGT in l’Alacantí-La Marina, who urged sustained efforts to push prevention further into everyday practice.
To address gaps, leaders in the labor movement emphasize several concrete steps. These include strengthening the role of prevention delegates within companies and extending this framework to SMEs and micro-SMEs that may lack formal structures due to their size. There is also a push to monitor new risk factors and rising incidents in evolving work environments, such as solar panel installation sites and the commuting routes of workers using electric scooters.
Sectors
The head of Occupational Health for the CC OO in l’Alacantí i les Marines, Javier Pérez, welcomed the decline in deaths but stressed that the reduction must continue. Prevention efforts should be reinforced in sectors where the overall rise in accidents remains higher.
At the provincial level, the distribution of incidents through October shows: 2,462 accidents in the construction sector, up 7.5% from the previous year; 2,216 in the manufacturing sector, up 6%; and 2,126 in commerce, up 5.2%. In the hospitality and service sectors, 1,816 incidents were recorded, an 8.1% increase. These sectoral figures reflect workplace accidents and do not include incidents that occur during travel.
The idea of practical, on-the-ground training is gaining traction. Employers, represented by CEV, acknowledge that while the number of accidents has risen, the rate per worker remained steady due to more people working. They maintain that improvements are always possible and affirm that the Confederation is actively pursuing safer workplaces as the sole path to reducing occupational accidents.
Regional perspective
Despite the sizable national totals, Alicante stands out for having one of the lowest accident rates across Spain. The province records approximately 197.4 accidents per 10,000 active workers, versus a national average of 229.3. The CC OO attributes this lower rate to the composition of local occupations, heavily oriented toward services, coupled with a larger informal economy where accidents among irregular workers are not captured in formal statistics.
Self-employed workers experience far fewer incidents. Government data show the accident rate for self-employed individuals is about one-third of that for salaried workers. Specifically, self-employed workers report around 71.3 claims per 10,000, compared with 228.5 for salaried employees. Across Spain, roughly 528,709 work accidents have been reported to date this year, with a 0.6% decrease in fatalities relative to the prior period.
In summary, while the province records a higher number of incidents in recent months, the trend reflects ongoing efforts to improve workplace safety. The focus remains on preventive measures, targeted safety campaigns, and robust monitoring of evolving risk factors to protect workers across all sectors.