It is estimated that in Italy there are at least 336 thousand minors between the ages of 7 and 15 who have had continuous, occasional or occasional work experience.. That is, almost 1 minor in 15 carries out work before the legal age allowed (16 years) with apprenticeship contracts. If we count the minors who have not necessarily attended school for 10 years and/or completed a training course to obtain a professional qualification, we arrive at the figure of 500 thousand children, from North to South.
“For years, Emilia-Romagna has consistently been among the top three regions in Italy that sell minors to employees. Approximately 6,750 children under the age of 17, 30 thousand if we count young people up to 19 years of age. And the data becomes worrying when we read the statistics relating to reports of accidents at work. The regions with the highest percentages of total injury reports in the five-year period 2017-2021 for workers under 19 are: Lombardy (76,942) and Emilia Romagna (40,000). If we also add Veneto and Piedmont to these, we reach more than 50% of accident reports throughout Italy. The most recent data (the period 2018-2022) always sees Emilia-Romagna in second place overall after Lombardy. Figures that are not biased but from an institutional source: Unicef Italy which in the last two years has presented two statistical reports on child labor in Italy”. Tullia Bevilacqua, regional secretary of Ugl Emilia-Romagna, states and clarifies the phenomenon.
“And there is another phenomenon not to underestimate: we witness a progressive increase in irregular underage workers. A phenomenon that increasingly requires reflection which concerns both the concrete increase in risks to which minors themselves are exposed during work activities, and the need to resort to remedies which concern the implementation of controls and active supervision on the one hand, and an intensification of professional training programs for young people to free them from exploitation and gangmastering, on the other”, adds Tullia Bevilacqua.
“Alarm bells must ring in the verification of school dropouts. In Emilia-Romagna, 9% of residents between 18 and 24 years old left school early. The incidence is high in children from foreign families with lower income. And moreover the data shows us that precisely the socio-family and economic context is among the most relevant factors in school dropout. From this point of view, Emilia-Romagna and the North in general where the territory manages to compensate for the family’s hardship, with cultural offers and greater capacity for integration into the relational and social fabric, there are more antibodies than in the South so that the children grow without dispersing scholastically” adds the regional secretary of Ugl Emilia-Romagna Tullia Bevilacqua.
“It’s trite to say but it’s the truth: dropping out of school deprives children who are forced to work of their right to education, compromising their opportunities to obtain more dignified employment during adulthood. The issue, therefore, is particularly complex and articulated, because it concerns intersecting worlds: school, training, work, family and society”: he specifies.
What to do, then? “Minors can do little to solve the problem, it is responsibility of governments and institutions speak out and insist that measures be taken to put an end to this. In general, child labor in Italy remains under the radar due to the lack of statistical surveys and administrative data. Analytical data are the starting point and the indispensable tool for monitoring the phenomenon and for implementing targeted interventions based on the needs and individual characteristics of minors and on the specificities of the different economic sectors where irregularities are most widespread. Talking about it is therefore necessary. And in analyzing the phenomenon to identify solutions, the Ugl is ready to do its part”, concludes Bevilacqua.
: “Problem also in Emilia-Romagna. Urgent measures are needed against exploitation and gangmastering”){kind=link}