Journalists and photojournalists at work (Photo: ImagoEconomica/Fnsi)
Initiatives 30 Apr 2024
The Fnsi general secretary on the eve of May 1st: «The daily struggle of journalists today is to maintain the duty to inform, recognized by the Constitution», at a time when «in our sector work has become a commodity, paid downwards ». This is why the union is carrying out a “dispute for dignity”.
Of Alessandra Costante
Pointed out as a caste and instead increasingly poor workers. Indicated as privileged and instead caught between widespread corporate crises and a future even more uncertain than the present. The daily struggle of journalists today is to maintain the duty to inform, recognized by the Constitution, and the dignity of their profession. So on Labor Day I make the words of the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, my own: “Work is not a commodity”. «Work is freedom. First of all, freedom from need.”
And again: «Work must be free from conditioning, imbalances, abuses that create marginalization and therefore represent the opposite of its role and its meaning». The perfect snapshot of the world of information in which work has become a commodity, paid at a low price: 3 euros for a collaboration. There are hundreds of precarious journalists who, with their daily work, underpaid and unrecognised, represent the main shareholders of many publishing companies. The same ones who, piece by piece, are trying to dismantle the national employment contract, which has been on hold since 2014.
Conditioning, imbalances, abuse, marginalization are typical of the world of information. The crisis exists, we cannot deny it, but the recipe for treating it to date has been wrong, even harmful.
Italy has a problem with work, the first of social rights. And our category is no exception.
In 2022 and 2023, the Department for Information and Publishing made 12 million euros per year available to publishing companies for relief on the hiring of under 36s and for the stabilization of temporary workers. Funds left to stagnate by publishers.
This is why together with the great battle for freedom of information, muzzled by laws that trample on article 21 of the Constitution and reduced under the control of politics, the Fnsi is carrying forward the dispute for the dignity of journalistic work: we must recover income and life times, abolish the shame of coordinated and continuous collaboration contracts of colleagues who have an average income of less than 10 thousand euros per year, transform precarious work into dignified work.
Give value to journalistic work to prevent our media from being conquered by artificial intelligence in the not too distant future. Only with these prospects of employment and dignity can we celebrate May Day.
