LAMEZIA TERME – The regional trade union organisations, on the sidelines of the meeting on the regional contract for the forestry sector, which took place on 8 May last at the Regional Citadel, urged the management of the Calabria Verde company regarding the immediate start of activities at the forestry construction sites for workers of the former law 15/2008 and 40/2013.
«These are workers, 515 of the former law 15 and 64 of the former law 40, who were part of that historic precarious situation – declared in a note the regional General Secretaries Michele Sapia (Fai Cisl), Caterina Vaiti (Flai CGIL), Pasquale Barbalaco (Uila Uil) – and that, with regional law n. 55 of 2023 were employed by the regional company Calabria Verde, hired as fixed-term forestry workers and included in the agricultural welfare system.
An important result resulting from discussion and union activity which in recent months has seen the single union, category federations and regional confederations as protagonists.
A stabilization path strongly encouraged by the unitary union also in consideration of the activities that these workers will carry out, in support of the various functions and initiatives for the protection of forestry heritage, soil protection, forestry hydraulic arrangement. A bit of new blood in the Calabrian forestry sector which however requires an immediate and indispensable generational change with new and young workforce.
Furthermore, for these workers – the note continues – we requested and obtained that they work a minimum number of days in the month of December 2023, for further social security protections and welfare benefits.
After then – Sapia, Vaiti and Barbalaco continue – these workers have remained without pay for months, due to the failure to open the construction sites, as the Calabria Verde company is still waiting for the delivery of the supply of personal protection (PPE).
All this despite the workers concerned having been hired on 19 April and having already carried out, following our union requests, the medical examinations required by law.
Furthermore – say the regional secretaries of Fai, Flai, Uila – we have repeatedly requested that the process for the supply of PPE by Calabria Verde should start as soon as possible, in order to start construction activities in the first days of May and to be able to give the workers who wait with anxiety and enthusiasm, the much desired opportunity to carry out a contractual and no longer precarious job.
During the meeting and after a long discussion – the trade unionists communicate – the Calabria Verde company assured that by May 24th the workers concerned, after the delivery of the PPE, will be started on construction site activities.
We hope that the PPE will be delivered as soon as possible, so as to allow these workers, who deserve the dignity and tranquility of work sought and postponed for too long, to definitively emerge from the precarious situation.
The workers – concludes the union note – can no longer wait, just as the entire Calabrian forestry sector can no longer wait, for an immediate turnover, as has been repeatedly requested of the Calabria Region”.
