Living on just over 7 euros an hour and a monthly salary that doesn’t even reach 600 euros. In the redundancy fund for over 5 years, with a dependent wife and children and no one capable of changing your condition, while on the news we hear about rains of millions from the Just Transition Fund which will change the economic history of cities like yours.
Trembling at every change of contract because that 500 euro a month job, however ugly and difficult, is the only one that allows you to pay the bills. Locking your hopes inside a thermal bag at a food delivery shop and hoping not to be beaten by a violent customer.
Being the worker, the labourer, the nurse, the builder, the salesman, who sees his company fail and ends up being just another number in that statistic of fired, inactive, unemployed and ghosts of the work of this land .
Living redundant, suspended, waiting for economic resources, as if work were charity, and not a civil right. Having worked a lifetime, occasionally, as a precarious worker, and having collected a social pension as an elderly person that barely manages to balance the high electricity and gas bills.
The CGIL of Taranto decides not to just do a historical re-enactment, but to update the message of April 25th to the present day.
They are our “Resisters” of today, the ones we meet every day in the rooms of our trade unions, in line at the CAAF, at the INCA counters – says the general secretary of the CGIL of Taranto, Giovanni D’Arcangelo – They are the ones to whom we dedicate the our “April 25th” because if it is true that it was work that saved Italy after 1945, today it is the work that is missing, that is becoming more and more precarious, that consumes its purchasing power, that is the conflict that these millions of “Resisters” face with their bare hands and sometimes without hope or listening.
For this reason, the CGIL wanted more than symbolically to unite the celebration of April 25th, the 79th anniversary of the Liberation from the Nazi-Fascist regime, with the launch of our referendum campaign “I’ll sign my name for work”, to make work dignified, stable, protected and safe.
Being resistant today, carrying out the exercise of memory to defend the Constitution and democracy today is a duty, but also a commitment that involves sacrifice. Because being resistant in the South, in a city like Taranto, involves so much effort – continues D’Arcangelo – To make this reflection, today we have brought you the stories of those who resist and fight against exasperated precariousness, no less tragic and bloody than forms of violence armed.
And next to the faces and voices of the “Resistance” workers and pensioners, there is the war bulletin that comes from the numbers of the crisis areas, from INPS and ISTAT data.
In the crisis areas we manage the dismay of almost 5 thousand workers on redundancy pay (ordinary and extraordinary), and the shattered hopes of almost 400 workers in the world of commerce, textiles, construction, environmental hygiene, metalworking or large-scale distribution have ended up on the margins – says Giuseppe Romano, secretary of the CGIL of Taranto.
INPS data confirm the ongoing conflict. Starting with the one who photographs the territory. The province of Taranto in 2022 had 556 thousand inhabitants, the capital municipality almost 200 thousand, making it the second city in Puglia after Bari in terms of population density.
A third of the population is over 65 years of age and this confirms the negative trend in the birth rate. Old, precarious and in many cases on the threshold of poverty: it would be the right title to represent Taranto and its province. Even in this case the figures are inclement.
The employment rate recorded in Taranto and its province in 2022 (data presented by INPS in November 2023) is 38.4% compared to 42.6% in Puglia and 52.2% in the nation. The territorial unemployment rate is 13.1%, compared to 12.1% in the Puglia region. The inactive people in Taranto and its province are 55.7%, compared to 8% in the regional territory and 43.2% nationally.
But that 38.4% suffers further corrosion by virtue of the tables that configure the use of social safety nets. In Taranto and its province, the workers who had to use it were only almost 25 thousand for a total amount of over 10 million hours.
An army of unemployed, precarious, inactive, pensioners at the minimum, which records an all-female record on the extreme front. There are just over 52 thousand women who work compared to over 104 thousand men – says Tiziana Ronsisvalle, secretary of the CGIL of Taranto – and they are often entrusted with the most precarious jobs, those punctuated by constant changes of contracts, by extremely necessary services such as those of care and nurturing, relegated to the role of numerical practices to fill the boxes of the local Social Plans.
A figure which, together with that of female unemployment, also goes hand in hand with the resistance implemented by women at the head of single-parent families. “In the city of Taranto alone, there are almost 15 thousand single-parent families in total, of which over 11 thousand are made up of women and their children – continues Tiziana Ronsisvalle – Family units that experience the precariousness of work, but also a precariousness of life, without assistance, work-life balance services, extension of school days”.
They are the “Resisters” that we celebrate today, not forgetting those who yesterday in the history of the CGIL and in the post-war period affirmed that work was the true resource for rebuilding the country – says Giovanni D’Arcangelo – That history teaches that no rights, however, and as we are seeing in recent years, it is forever. And this is why the CGIL denounces the continuous delay that has characterized the discussion on the resources of the Just Transition Fund for many months now, and demands a return to citizens on issues such as safety in the workplace and in contracts, precarious employment and the reform tax.
For the work we put our name and face – concludes the General Secretary of the CGIL of Taranto, Giovanni D’Arcangelo – for reasons that apply from North to South throughout Italy, but here they have the flavor of an endless Resistance. During the press conference, Gaia Baggioni, socio-health worker of the integrated home care service, Vincenzo Bottiglione, worker on redundancy from the former Acciaierie d’Italia contract, Rosa Martinelli, spoke about their stories as workers, both precarious and resistant. Navy contract and Mariano Sassanelli, rider.
