One in three work injuries involves a foreigner
The number of work accidents in Switzerland went up last year by 3.2 per cent to 267,000. Almost a third of these involved foreign workers.
The number of non-professional accidents remained stable at 497,000, down 0.3 per cent on 2009.
Switzerland’s 35 accident insurers said Germans were the foreigners involved in the most accidents – 36,000 – ahead of Italians.
For Germans, Italians and French living in Switzerland, 40 per cent of accidents occurred on the job. The figure for Swiss was 30 per cent.
The Portuguese, however, had most (60 per cent) of their accidents at work. This is the result of foreign workers generally doing riskier work than Swiss. Also, whereas Portuguese workers are often found on construction sites, for example, Germans tend to land safer jobs.
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