PESARO – The campaign of Filcams Cgil for workers in the tourism supply chain restarts in 2024 and moves to the territories, with campers that will travel along the tourist locations of the country and with regional initiatives that will focus on reiterating the need to overcome a now unsustainable employment model, to put work, Quality of employment and sustainability of working conditions in the sector.
Pesaro, the Italian capital of culture 2024, will host the inaugural stage of a complex tour that will cover all the Italian regions between June and September.
The unions took to the streets Thursday 6 June, at 6.00 pm from Piazza della Libertà on the Pesaro seafront, with a particular presence where the Aparte theater company with Laura Pozone, Gianluca Di Lauro and Lorenzo Piccolo presented an animation which, not without irony and a pinch of irreverence, pointing the finger at the irregularities and injustices that they often characterize work, in all its forms: from lifeguard surveillance to catering and hotel services, to hospitality in museums and archaeological sites.
Also present at the initiative, promoted with the collaboration of the university students of the UDU and the Middle Students Network and with the patronage of the Pesaro 2024 Italian Capital of Culture Committee, were the National Secretary of Filcams Cgil Monja Caiolo and the General Secretary of Filcams Cgil Marche Barbara Lucchi.
«After the health emergency was overcome, attendance and turnover reached record figures – states Caiolo – yet the sector continues to show that it needs an upheaval, a radical change of perspective that shows greater respect for all the workers who allow the tourism industry to function at full capacity and generate earnings that represent 9.5% of the national GDP. For this reason, we return to the beaches, among clubs and hotels and in places of culture, to meet workers and put together #Turismo SottoSopra”.
For the unions, however, it is «a sector where black and gray work proliferates, where the work is underpaid and debased professionalism, where in the name of brevity of seasonal employment the workforce is exploited to the bone, without rest, without holidays, without illness, with work shifts that far exceed the hours contractually foreseen and where overtime is not paid regularly. At each end of the season people are left without a job, with insufficient social coverage and who have to make sure they get that job again the following year, although aware that in the face of an inadequate salary they will once again have to shut down their lives for a few months and no longer have time for anything other than work. The Tourism entrepreneurs largely now consider it obvious to expect a lot and not give enough in exchange: it is considered obvious that a lifeguard, instead of dedicating himself responsibly to the protection of bathers, must also open umbrellas and sunbeds and clean the beach, that a housekeeper must prepare ten rooms in an hour under penalty of a salary reduction, that tips of a waiter or a porter are considered part of the salary, that experience and skills do not have the right weight in the professional classification. What must be obvious however, as the Filcams campaign reiterates, is that work is worth it and that workers, with the support of the union, can and must assert themselves. Tourism cannot continue to be precarious and exploitative: giving dignity to work means giving value to the entire team that that work nourishes and supports.”
