Tragedies at work

Thousands of Italians have chosen to emigrate abroad over the years to try their luck, or with the hope of finding a secure job and a better future for themselves and their families. In many cases they were employed as factory workers, labourers, miners and carpenters.

Tragedies at work are still a very topical issue today.

Here are the stories of some occupational accidents that escalated into the most appalling massacres.

Between the late 1800s and mid 1900s, Italians found work in the United States, in the towns of Cherry, in Dawson, in Monongah, where many of them died due to practically non-existent safety conditions. Most of the workers in Cherry were miners from Emilia. On 13 November 1909, a huge fire broke out: of the 279 victims, 73 were Italian. The mine in Dawson, on the other hand, was one of the safest, equipped with with state-of-the-art facilities.

 Nevertheless, on 22 October 1913, a gas explosion caused 263 casualties (140 of whom Italian). Monongah was a disaster on several fronts: the estimated number of victims was between 500 and 900, but many of the bodies were unrecognisable and the company management did not have a complete list of employees.

Italians in the United States were also employed in textile factories, including the Triangle Shirtwaist Company in the heart of Manhattan. The employees of this factory worked in wretched conditions and for pitiful wages. A fire broke out on 25 March 1911, killing 146 of them.

In 1926, a group of mountain dwellers from Modena moved to Corsica to work as sawyers. A violent windstorm struck the shack they lived in and 12 people died. Neither the Corsican nor the Italian authorities bothered to turn up for the funeral. On 8 August 1956, a fire broke out at Bois du Cazier in the Marcinelle mine, killing 262 people, 139 of whom were Italians.

The Mattmark facility in Switzerland was one of those that employed most foreign labour. On 30 August 1965, an avalanche of more than two million cubic metres of ice broke away from the glacier and smashed into the workers' huts, killing 88 people, 56 of whom were Italian.