The site of an industrial accident. Photo: Getty Images/iStockphoto In parts of the United States, workers can be fired for filing a claim for workers’ compensation. At some of our nation’s assisted-living facilities, employees are not entitled to any compensation if they develop a bacterial infection on the job. Unlike in most European countries, workers’ compensation in the U.S. does not typically cover injuries suffered while commuting to and from work.
In France, they do things a little differently. In 2013, a French engineer suffered a cardiac arrest while having an adulterous liaison with a stranger on a business trip. This week, a Paris court ruled that this tragedy qualified as an “industrial accident,” and ordered the engineer’s employer to pay the deceased man’s family’s up to 80 percent of his salary until what would have been the year of his retirement.
This story has garnered tabloid attention in the Anglophone press because there is something amusing in the way its details seem to affirm some of our crudest stereotypes about the French . But one shouldn’t lose sight of the human tragedy at the heart of the matter. Someone lost her husband forever as a result of an embarrassing accident that might have never happened, were it not for the demands of his job.