A punishment condemns the maintenance company that had hired him to reimburse his daughter
A ruling of the Social Court Number 2 of Ciudad Real has declared the death from covid in the first wave of the pandemic of a maintenance worker at La Mancha Centro Hospital in Alcázar de San Juan (Ciudad Real) as an “occupational accident”.
Until now, these types of court decisions have focused on healthcare workers, but here he acknowledges that the death of this worker, José Ángel Olivares, 51, in March 2020 can also be considered an accident at work. The verdict also condemns the company that hired him and his insurer to pay the daughter of the deceased – he was divorced – the compensation provided for this contingency in the collective agreement of the metal sector of Ciudad Real. The insured has given up the appeal and has agreed to pay this fee.
José Ángel received a daily salary of 76.95 euros for his work as a maintenance worker in this hospital. On March 23, 2020, he began sick leave for “infectious contact or exposure” and died four days later of “bilateral Covid-19 pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome, and severe hypoxemic respiratory failure.”
According to the sentence, “since it has been proven that the death followed the temporary disability without continuity solution and that it was caused by the virus that determined its onset, it would already be sufficient to declare that the contingency was the work accident ». company and the insurer had argued that José Ángel was not a health professional, so his death could not be considered as the result of an accident at work. However, the court specifies that this concept “broadly refers to the personnel who provide services in health or social health centers”.
In this case, the operator traveled around the hospital, including the floors with Covid patients, to repair damaged elements such as beds or oxygen systems and, according to the ruling, “in the early days of the pandemic, he had to do it daily because the need and urgency when admitting patients in those first moments, it overwhelmed the hospital “and these workers” only wore gloves and a mask.
Source: La Verdad
I’m Ben Stock, a journalist and author at Today Times Live. I specialize in economic news and have been working in the news industry for over five years. My experience spans from local journalism to international business reporting. In my career I’ve had the opportunity to interview some of the world’s leading economists and financial experts, giving me an insight into global trends that is unique among journalists.
