Maybe I wasn't understanding an article in madridiaro.es properly...but I believe it said that 260 people were killed on the job in the Comunidad de Madrid in 2004. It added (if I understanded the article properly) that a lot of the workers killed were sub-contract workers. I believe Comunidad de Madrid has 5.5 Million people...

If I read that correctly...that is a very high workplace fatality rate...

Comparitively, we have had 180 people killed on the job in 2004 in the Province of Ontario (12 Million people)

In the Comunidad de Mardrid, when someone is killed/seriously injured at work...is there an investigation..if so by who ???

Here in Ontario,when someone is killed/seriously injured at work, Police Detectives and Inspectors with the Ministry of Labour investigate alwyas...the Ministry of Labour always lays charges against the employer when a fatality or very serious injury happeneds at work (if it is the employers fault).

Statistics are a funny thing...I'd take a guess that a lot of those 260 deaths come from the construction sector. If that is the case then you would have to compare more numbers, such as the amount of construction sites (or the number of people working in construction) in the province of Ontario vs the province of Madrid. Construction is booming here so there are lots and lots of people working in construction.

Safety seems a little slacker here though. As a matter of fact, I'm looking out my window onto a large construction site (making a tall apartment building) right now and I see very few workers wearing hard hats or safety belts. When I worked in construction/mining back home in Canada that was a rare thing to see. Ff you didn't wear your hard hat or safety belt a foreman was on you right away (all about the insurance costs).

I have a student who works for a big door factory here in Ocaña and he tells me that certain safety equipment (hard-hats, ear plugs, goggles, and safety features on machines) are often not used or disarmed in the factory until they know when an inspector is coming (incredibly enough they know when one is coming) and then the safety feature/equipment is used up until the inspector leaves. They also (according to my student) have now or had in the past a revolving shift (always the night shift) of illegal immigrant workers that are sent home for a period when they get wind of an upcoming inspection. You can bet those workers aren't supplied with hard hats. Now all the above info is second-hand but I doubt he would lie to me about it.

It’s all about effective enforcement. They will (companies, people) always get away with what they can. It’s that simple.

I think things are starting to change for the better though.