Officially, there’s no conflict. And nor, apparently, is there even any real tension between health and safety inspectors and GL Events, the company tasked with putting up most of the stands for the public at temporary sites for the Paris Olympics, from 26th July to 11th August.
Meanwhile Mediapart here reveals the discreet tug-of-war that has taken place over the past two months between the regulatory authorities and the major events company which is run by Olivier Ginon, who makes no secret of his close ties to Emmanuel Macron. According to our information, in March and April the assembling of stands by GL Events was partially halted at no fewer than three different Olympic sites.
On each occasion local inspectors deemed the construction sites to be too hazardous for the workers, there being a “serious and imminent danger” of someone falling from a great height. As reported by sports newspaper L’Équipe, the first construction site at which work was halted was the future equestrian stadium, in the prestigious grounds of the Palace of Versailles, on March 8th. The assembly of the site's north stand was suspended for six weeks, with health and safety officials only authorizing resumption on 18th April, once the safety measures for workers were deemed acceptable. This site has now been completed.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
Work at Place de la Concorde, site of the future “urban stadium” where the BMX and skateboard events will take place, was then disrupted for just over three weeks by a ban on assembling the stands from March 14th to April 9th. Finally, at the symbolic temporary stadium at the Eiffel Tower, which will host the beach volleyball and blind football events, the assembly of one stand was halted for two weeks, from April 16th to 30th.
When questioned by Mediapart, the regional government service that oversees health and safety issues – the Direction Régionale et Interdépartementale de l’Économie, de l’Emploi, du Travail et des Solidarités or DRIEETS - said these orders to stop work were part of their ongoing work in monitoring the Olympic Games sites. “More than a hundred work stoppages have been issued during the construction phase of the new Olympic sites,” it said. “This prerogative of the health and safety inspectorate is a precautionary measure aimed at preventing workplace accidents.”
For its part, the organizing committee of the Games was anxious to make clear that the three construction sites “were never halted in their entirety” and that the “schedule for erecting the sites experienced no delays”. Dismissing any tension over the stoppages, the Paris 2024 organisers spoke instead of “discussions that allowed for explanations and additional information on the methods and equipment used”.
GL Events took a similar line. As the leading French events company, in charge among other things of constructing two-thirds of the 200,000 temporary stand seats for the Paris Games, the company told Mediapart it was happy to have had “many constructive discussions with the [health and safety] administration”, with whom it shared the “same objectives: ensuring the safety of personnel”.
“We are uncompromising on issues of workplace health and safety prevention issues,” the company insisted, saying that “safety and prevention” matters were under “constant consideration”.
In a statement released on April 24th, GL Events had already noted that “these temporary interruption procedures are extremely common” and said that they should not be seen as “referring to potential immediate dangers”. Speaking to L’Équipe, the company talked about an “adjustment to the methodology” at its construction sites, and denied that employees had been in any danger.
Three refusals of permission for work to resume
But this reassuring language has raised eyebrows among the inspection services. For a health and safety inspector and their superiors, it is no trivial matter to interrupt business activity, and to do so requires being able to demonstrate that a serious danger really does exist, and that this risk is immediate.
Indeed, these are the only circumstances under which an inspector can immediately halt work without engaging in the usual lengthy exchanges of correspondence, which may eventually result in a report to the public prosecutor's office - with the latter then deciding whether or not to pursue legal action.
The Labour Code is clear on this: the only permissible aim of interrupting a construction site or halting work in a company is to “immediately remove a worker [...] from a situation of serious and imminent danger to their life or health”. And even then, it can only apply to a very restricted number of situations: the risk of a fall, being buried, electrocution, or contact with asbestos.
And the description of what took place when these Olympic stands were being assembled, which has emerged from observations and accounts shared by inspectors with their colleagues on site, clearly highlights areas of danger.
If someone fell from 3 or 4 metres, it was by no means certain that they wouldn't crash to the ground...
“The operating procedure clearly wasn't appropriate. First of all, no worker was using a cherry picker, and they were all in awkward and often dangerous positions, balancing on the metal structures, secured by a harness, clinging to and letting go of 'lifelines' as they went up,” said one member of the inspection team who collected these various accounts from the sites.
“At Place de la Concorde, colleagues carried out an inspection a day after construction had started, and some guys were already at a height of 7 metres,” continued this source. “The ropes holding them were not all properly adjusted: if someone fell from 3 or 4 metres, it was by no means certain that they wouldn't crash to the ground...”
GL Events is no stranger to major global events. The company was involved in setting up the Rugby World Cup in France last year and the FIFA World Cup in Qatar in 2022, as well as the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 and the Rio Games in 2016.
Domestically they have a major presence in Lyon in eastern France, where the group manages the city's Convention Centre and its football stadium. In Paris, it operates the Maison de la Mutualité, the Palais Brongniart (the former Paris Stock Exchange building), and the temporary Grand Palais on the Champ-de-Mars. It is also a candidate to take over the concession for the Stade de France sports stadium from the outgoing consortium Vinci-Bouygues.
However, the group does not directly employ the workers in charge of assembling the stands. Everywhere, there is a myriad of subcontractors, sometimes involving tiny businesses with just a handful of employees. These are not necessarily equipped with all the required safety equipment manuals, as mandated by law. Some of these small businesses employ seconded workers from Eastern Europe.
And while it is true there was dialogue between health and safety inspectors and GL Events, this was rather robust in nature. Across the three construction sites, officials formally refused to authorize the resumption of stand assembly when the proposed changes to the operating procedure submitted by the company were deemed insufficient. This occurred on March 13th at Versailles, April 2nd for Place de la Concorde, and April 22nd for the Eiffel Tower.
The company strongly defended its “traditional” assembly method. In one of its proposals to improve safety it even claimed that if workers used a lower level of protection, they would make progress more quickly, work for fewer days and ... therefore be less exposed to the risk of a fall.
At Place de la Concorde, it took four on-site meetings, with a lot of back-and-forth on the procedures to implement, before the health and safety executive declared itself satisfied. “The discussions with health and safety led us to change some of our operating methods that had previously proven successful on other major construction sites,” acknowledged GL Events management.
Clear verdict by Versailles administrative court
Evidently confident it was in the right, the company had meanwhile petitioned the Versailles administrative court on 25th March via an emergency procedure to challenge the halting of the work in the château's grounds. It proved to be a bad move: on April 11th the court summarily dismissed its request.
The judges' reasoning for upholding the decision made by health and safety inspectors to stop the work says a great deal about the situation on the construction site. “Some of the employees working on the assembly of the overhanging part were at a height estimated between 19 and 20 metres. Some of them were on boards that were not secured to the structure, and were therefore liable to slip, tilt, or fall. [...] No item reinforcing the strength of the harnesses, the only means of protection, was provided during the inspection or subsequently.”
Specialists in health and safety also query another point: once notified of the second interruption in assembling the stand at Place de la Concorde, the company subsequently provided no updates about this site for two weeks. This is very unusual, as companies typically present changes to their operating methods within two to three days.
Some interpret this lengthy silence as evidence that GL Events thought it could rely on political intervention. “The interests at stake clearly far exceed the health and safety of a mere worker,” one official said, echoing the sentiment of many of his colleagues.
Indeed, Olivier Ginon, the main shareholder of GL Events, is known for being one of the earliest backers of Emmanuel Macron, to whom the company granted significant discounts during his 2017 presidential campaign. Since then, the president has continuously shown him gratitude and friendship, personally awarding Ginon the Legion of Honour at the Élysée in 2023, for example. The entrepreneur was also appointed to the board of the Agence Nationale du Sport sports body in 2019.
GL Events is everywhere in the preparations for Paris 2024: the company is carrying out work on around twenty sites in total, providing scaffolding for hanging large screens and lighting installations at numerous Olympic venues, and managing hundreds of kilometres of electrical cables, as well as the Games' broadcasting centre.
Health and safety webinar
The company's central role and the importance of everything being ready for the opening ceremony has naturally led the authorities to keep a close eye on the progress of these works. Internally, health and safety management have indicated that both the prefect for the Paris region and officials working for the prime minister are following matters closely.
This did not stop DRIEETS itself from organizing a webinar on April 26th, bringing together around a hundred agents from all across the Paris region. This was to remind these officials that inspecting the assembly and dismantling of temporary structures was a priority, and to explain precisely the points that needed checking during a visit to the construction sites.
The health and safety executive in the Paris region maintains its commitment to monitor working conditions in the construction of Olympic sites.
This initiative was appreciated internally, even if it was also deemed somewhat belated, given that it took place a little more than two months before the start of the Games. “Strongly engaged in overseeing the building sites for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, the health and safety executive in the Paris region maintains its commitment to monitor working conditions in the construction of Olympic sites,” DRIEETS told Mediapart.
The webinar presentation on April 26th was backed up by a document published two days earlier by the Direction Générale du Travail (DGT), the department at the Ministry of Labour that oversees health and safety at work. “Employees assigned to the assembly and dismantling of temporary structures are exposed to significant risks of falling from heights, exacerbated by the temporary nature of the workplaces, time constraints, and joint working with other trades,” the document states. It reiterates that a “decision to temporarily halt work” is legitimate in a “situation of serious and imminent danger exposing an employee to a risk of falling from a height as a result of an absence of protection against this risk”.
The document also calls for the safety training of all workers to be verified and notes that “particular attention should be paid during inspections to the case of foreign workers, sometimes non-French speakers, to ensure that they have been properly trained and that they are aware of safety instructions”.
The first tensions between health and safety inspectors and the Games organisers had already appeared at the beginning of the year, during an inspection of how work was progressing at the Grand Palais in Paris. In the middle of being renovated, this Parisian building is due to host the Olympic fencing and taekwondo events. But for the athletes' comfort, the immense glass roof is having to be covered with dozens of giant tarpaulins, hung at a height that can exceed 30 metres.
The problem was that the riggers tasked with securing the sheeting will be exposed to lead contained within the metal framework, the toxicity of which poses a significant danger even in small doses (as seen with the Eiffel Tower). In response to the inspectorate's request, dust had to be removed as a matter of urgency, a process that needed to be completed in time for Emmanuel Macron's visit to the construction site on April 15th.
A number of health and safety inspectors are now waiting to see - and check - how GL Events will behave for the remainder of its projects at the Games. These start with the assembly of the stands for the audience attending the opening ceremony on the Seine, along 12 kilometres of riverbank. Work is due to begin on this in mid-May. Another area of concern is over the dismantling of all these temporary structures once the Games are over, when public attention is no longer focused on the event.
As a leading figure in the events sector, the company has often made clear its desire to work in its own way, on the grounds that it employs seasoned professionals and has not suffered any major workplace accidents for years. “The fear,” says one specialist in the area, “is that GL Events will succeed in getting practices accepted that a health and safety inspector would not consider meets the highest possible level of safety. The whole sector might have to follow suit for many years to come.”
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
- The original French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter