REGGIO EMILIA – Reggio Emilia is no longer a “happy island” as regards employment, which has become increasingly precarious, poor and discriminatory for women. It is the dark portrait painted by the provincial CGIL, which emerges from the Ires reports on “economy and work” (with data relating to 2023) and from the observatory of the territorial Chamber of Labor, updated – by crossing various databases – to 2022.
The numbers, presented today by the secretary Cristian Sesena and the members of the provincial secretariat Luca Chierici, Elena Strozzi, Marika Rodaro and Davide Mariotti, highlight first of all that in 2022 82% of the hires made by Reggio Emilia companies were not permanent , therefore proving precarious. Not only that: between 2019 and 2022, only a third of those hired (33%) saw their contract transform into a permanent one, a percentage that drops to 27% when it comes to fixed-term contracts.
The analyzes then record two trends that are only apparently antithetical. In fact, both employment (+3.1%) and unemployment (+22%) increase simultaneously in the province. As Luca Chierici explains, however, “the fact that both indicators increase and that the inactive number decreases means that there is an increase in people looking for work or the unemployed”. As regards the increase in employment, continues the trade unionist, “we need to know that it is not necessarily of good quality because even those who work only a few hours in a year are considered employed, but above all employment increases in particular for the audience male (by 31%) and instead unemployment increases especially for women (by 38%)”.
In short, summarizes Chierici, “women are trying more to enter the world of work but companies are more receptive to men”. On the point of gender employment discrimination, Sesena adds: “We have women who are looking for work and can’t find it and women who leave it to take care of care duties, which are no longer just children but also the elderly.” Furthermore, “we can glimpse a pocket of poverty and marginality that concerns migrant women (only 7% of activations in 2022), who partly for cultural reasons and partly due to rejection by the world of work, swell a potential pool of marginalization ”.
Sesena then observes that “when the job market is in a positive phase, opportunities are seized by men. Conversely, in times of crisis, low-quality work, the crumbs, are left to women.” Finally, the secretary of the Reggio Emilia CGIL specifies that “the increase in contracts does not always correspond to the ‘heads’, because the same person can have several contracts in a year”.
Returning to the numbers, another data from which the precariousness of work emerges is that of the new contracts activated in 2022, of which 16% concerned people over 50 years of age. That therefore “even at an advanced age they are forced to change jobs, when in the past they generally remained in the same job until retirement”.
Lastly, as regards daily wages, in Reggio they are higher than the regional average (101 euros against 98.6). But between the tasks the gap is wide: from 186 for a worker, to 105 for an employee, to 64 euros for an apprentice and 504 euros per day for a manager. Starting from the numbers – which also cross-reference the referendum campaign it is conducting – the CGIL has also drawn up a 14-point document for the candidates for mayor of 31 municipalities.
