“The development of the Republic needs the relaunch of the South. It is hardly necessary to underline how balanced and quality growth in the South of Italy ensures great benefits for theentire national territory“. In the days in which the Northern League bill on differentiated autonomy is about to become law (which will allow the Regions to manage matters hitherto reserved to the State) Sergio Mattarella sends an unequivocal message from Calabria, visiting the Cosentino agri-food district on the occasion of May 1st. “A separation of the roads between Northern territories and Southern territories would lead to serious damage to both”, is the warning, greeted with applause. For Labor Day the head of state condemns “it continuous drip of deaths, caused by carelessness, imprudence, risks that should not have been taken. A thousand deaths at work in a year represents one unimaginable tragedy. Each of them is unacceptable.” And he reiterates the fundamental role of the unions: “The intermediate bodies are a characterizing element of the design of our Constitution and bring benefits to Italy. The trade union movement – bearer of democratic values - is irrepressible interlocutor for the development of fruitful collective, sector and company bargaining”.
Mattarella expresses “great satisfaction” with the employment data, which “record significant growth overall”, as part of a “positive trend” present throughout Europe. “Of course”, he adds, however, “we must not forget the social and territorial disparities that persist; the excluded; the phenomenon of jobs precarious and underpaid“. And above all “the low level of pay of young people’s first entry into the world of work, which induces many of them to go abroad under better conditions”. Furthermore – he recalls – “the difficulties of those who endure one continue disability, the weight of the burden of care which often pushes even the families of those who have a job into need”. Work which, underlines the President of the Republic, “it is not a commodity“, but “it is inextricably linked to the person, to his dignity, to his social dimension, to the contribution that each person can and must make to participation in the life of society”: for this reason “it must be free from conditioning, imbalances, abuses that they create marginalization and therefore represent the opposite of its role and meaning”.
