The Carabinieri of the Livorno command arrested 10 people accused of exploitation of the work of 67 non-EU workers. The workers, recruited without a regular contract, were paid 0.97 cents an hour.
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The Carabinieri of the Livorno command arrested, carrying out a precautionary custody measure in prison, 10 people accused, in various capacities and in conjunction with each other, of labor exploitation and illicit intermediation. According to what emerged from the investigations, it would be a case of gangmastering in agriculture.
The victims are 67 people, all non-EU citizens, hosted in the Cas of Piombino. Workers were employed to harvest vegetables and olives in the fields and to clean vineyards in the provinces of Livorno and Grosseto for a few cents.
Those involved, according to what emerged, would be of Bangladeshi nationality while those arrested would be businessmen of Pakistani origin who “selected” the laborers on the orders of the Italian owners of 6 companies.
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The investigation conducted by the Livorno prosecutor’s office and by the operational and mobile unit of the Piombino carabinieri company, together with the Livorno Labor Inspectorate, made it possible to reconstruct the illicit use of manpower implemented by 6 owners of individual businesses in the agricultural sector. According to what was disclosed, the owners of the Italian companies would have employed other people for the “recruitment, daily transport and control of workers”.
Taking advantage of their state of need, they paid the 67 laborers of the Cas Le Caravelle in Piombino 0.97 cents per hour with peaks of 10 hours of work without the required breaks. The workers did not have a regular employment contract and their remuneration was far below the 10.56 euros foreseen by the negotiation.
Furthermore, in the companies in question, safety and hygiene regulations were also violated. During the operation, a preventive seizure decree was also executed 45,000 euros, as profit ascertained by INPS following the failure to pay social security and insurance contributions for illegally employed workers.
