The construction of Oceana has been surrounded by criticism and will now be reviewed by the Swedish Work Environment Authority.
At the same time, the union is calling on the industry to take greater responsibility.
- "There needs to be more controls and, above all, sanctions in place so that everyone who is there comes home safely after work," says Johan Lindholm of Byggnads.
More than 20 people have been treated and one person is still missing after the major fire in Liseberg's new Oceana bathhouse.
NCC, which is responsible for the construction, has stated that the fire occurred during a work process and the missing person is employed by Liseberg.
Recently, several serious accidents have occurred on Swedish construction sites, including the elevator accident in Sundbyberg where five people died.
The circumstances of the accident at Oceana are still unclear, but the construction site has been subject to criticism and last summer Göteborgs-Posten reported that several shortcomings had been discovered.
These included collaboration with a construction company whose owner had been convicted of aggravated assault and unclear logins on the site. The information from the external company Moxy ID also claimed that during an inspection there should have been 168 skilled workers distributed among 58 companies in the workplace area.
- "These are shortcomings that NCC must deal with, but we take it seriously because we are the client," Thomas Sjöstrand, CEO of Lisebergs AB Skår, told GP at the time.
Johan Lindholm, chairman of the union Byggnads, says that they are following the development of Oceana and that their relevant department has been on site.
- "This building has been criticized before and many errors have been discovered, including in the posting register. "When there are a large number of actors, we repeatedly see that many things are neglected, not least the work environment," says Johan Lindholm.
He does not want to speculate on the causes of the fire but says that they see a worrying trend in the industry.- "We see a trend where the big companies are getting rid of their own staff and hiring a large number of subcontractors. This leads to a poorer working environment, makes it unclear who is responsible and increases the risk of labor crime," says Johan Lindholm.He believes that the number of subcontractors must be limited and inspections increased.- "There needs to be more checks and, above all, sanctions directly on site so that the necessary measures can be taken immediately to ensure that everyone who is there gets home safely after work.
The Swedish Work Environment Authority's regional manager Martin Wennerström says that he currently lacks insight into the authority's previous work on Oceana.By lunchtime, two reports had been received, one from NCC and one from the Rescue Service in Gothenburg. At that time, the incident was assessed as a workplace accident and the authority was awaiting information from the police's labor crime unit.Thereafter, a dialog with the main contractor NCC is expected to begin.
- "Then we will focus on two things. One is, of course, forward-looking, if there is something that is lacking in their work environment work that means that we will make demands in the future to ensure that it does not happen again.
The second focus is to investigate what happened in the accident and whether any employer has failed and should be held accountable, for example for work environment violations.
- Then we will collect the information we need to substantiate it and then inform the police and prosecutors," says Martin Wennerström.
In an email to DN, NCC's press officer Amelie Winberg writes that they are dismayed by what has happened.
- The Swedish Work Environment Authority has an important role in investigating the causes of accidents so that we can work to prevent them from being repeated. We do everything we can to cooperate with them in the investigation," says Amelie Winberg.
When asked about the number of subcontractors, NCC replies that this is natural as the project requires a lot of specialist knowledge.
- "We are always clear about the procedures and requirements that apply to everyone working on our projects, and that we take it very seriously if they are not followed. The investigation will show what caused this unimaginable thing to happen at Oceana," writes Amelie Winberg.
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