The CGIL, through its trade unions Filcams and FLC, returns in a long statement to the lack of seasonal workers at the start of the tourist season.
“If in recent years – declares – an attempt was made to blame the difficulties of the sector on factors such as the elimination of vouchers or the introduction of Citizenship Income, in recent weeks the apprenticeship contract for minors has been put at the center of attention and in particular the Note INL (National Labor Inspectorate) n. 1369/2023 which supported the need for coherence between the school path and the work activity”.
“This is clearly an exploitation – the union continues -: the problems related to the recruitment of manpower in tourism are connected to structural factors that must be addressed seriously, without falling into a sterile and non-constructive media debate every year. On the one hand, we are faced with a major demographic crisis whose effects are starting to have repercussions on the world of work, while the Government continues to exploit the issue of managing migratory flows for electoral purposes. On the other hand, the tourism sector must instead be attractive, starting with an increase in wages and adequate working conditions”.
“The sector – states the CGIL – is instead characterized by structural precariousness: in 2022 in Emilia-Romagna less than one employee in five was employed on a permanent basis and, if part-time workers are excluded, this percentage even drops to 12.9%. Added to this contractual precariousness is the lack of redistribution of the wealth produced due to the failure to renew the national contracts, all of which expired between 2018 and 2021. Consequently, the already low wages are unable to recover even the purchasing power eroded by the ‘inflation”.
“Precarity, involuntary part-time, low wages, exaggerated flexibility cannot produce quality employment, therefore confirming the nefarious vision that considers work in this sector almost exclusively seasonal, temporary, precarious and therefore with less dignity than others. To all this there are too often phenomena of real illegality: illegal and gray work, illicit and non-genuine contracts, illicit interposition of labour”.
“The tourism industry – he adds – would instead need to affirm a completely opposite vision to express all its development potential: greater planning, investments and training with the aim of determining stable employment, decent wages and sustainable working conditions in full compliance with the collective agreements signed by the comparatively more representative and of the rules to protect health and safety in the workplace, a reform of the NASpI aimed at introducing a specific social safety net to guarantee continuity of income for seasonal workers and social security rights”.
“In this case we are faced with a further element of concern: the idea of circumventing the difficulties in finding manpower by extending the use of child labor is a dangerous idea – points out -. We cannot think of responding to the enormous demographic issue affecting our country by fishing out the solution of child labor from the attic: in a world that is changing so radically and quickly, there is a need for more school and not less school. Indeed, it is essential to combat any form of exploitation which unfortunately too often hides even in school-work alternation paths”.
“Even more so since today it is already possible to hire girls and boys aged at least 16 through normal fixed-term employment contracts. It is unacceptable that this controversy over child apprenticeship has as its sole objective that of being able to hire workers while saving on wages and contributions”.
“For these reasons – concludes the statement -, let’s make a clear proposal: let’s get away from exploitation and open a real discussion on how to qualify work and services in the tourism sector. At a regional level we have the right and adequate space in which to start this discussion: the Pact for Work and the Climate, in which with the method of discussion that has always characterized the Pact, we are ready to bring our proposals and share them with the institutions and employer associations that compose it”.
