“Yesterday, June 18, was the fifth anniversary of the creation in 2019 of the Ravenna Observatory for the legality and safety of work. A constitution that remained on paper. It was an objective of Ravenna in the Municipality that we had set ourselves and set ourselves for the 2016-2021 council, including it in our electoral program and we obstinately pursued it, arriving at the presentation of a specific agenda in December 2018. For which the satisfaction of succeed in the result through widespread sharing which the press described as follows:
«On Tuesday the municipal council approved the agenda “Observatory for legality and safety at work” presented by Massimo Manzoli, group leader of Ravenna in the Municipality and signed, after modifications, by Marco Turchetti (Pd) and Daniele Perini (Ama Ravenna). 21 councilors voted in favor (majority groups, CambieRà, La Pigna, Lista per Ravenna, Misto group, Ravenna in Comune); 2 abstentions (Forza Italia and councilor Learco Vittorio Tavoni of the Northern League)”.
Already a couple of years later Manzoli himself, about to conclude the advice, summed up:
«The observatory we proposed does not exist. Our idea envisaged a municipal observatory, which means putting resources and time into coordinating it to map and monitor the critical situations in our territory, relating to mafia infiltration and situations of illegality and gray areas of work. Naturally starting from the analysis of spurious or fake cooperatives that live on subcontracting in the port and from situations of similar gangmastering in the agricultural sector. Being a small list, to pass the proposals you have to find a square with the majority. The only way to get it through was to accept the observatory in the prefecture and not established in the municipality, the council felt it did not have to spend time and resources to coordinate and we accepted in the hope and good faith that it was not just a place of institutional facade”.
We believed and believe that the verification of working conditions, of respect for the rights established in laws and contracts and, above all, of everything concerning the safe carrying out of the activity of workers constitutes the essential condition for the relationship between those who work and those who exploit labor are not totally unbalanced in favor of the latter. Above all, a frequent and unexpected control activity can make a fundamental contribution to ensuring that the working day ends with the return home and does not enrich the accounting of deaths and injuries. The current impossibility for the necessary inspection activity to correspond to its concrete implementation requires that, at the very least, what is carried out be done effectively and in the places where it is most indispensable.
The data collected by the Observatory, which we would have liked to have been made public, could have answered questions such as these:
Which type of violations were most frequently charged: workplace hygiene and safety, contributory regularity or other?
Have there been companies that, more than others, have accumulated violations? If so, which sector of the supply chain do they belong to? Are they connected to each other?
How much do companies and cooperatives involved in contracts and subcontracts “weigh” in the calculation of the violations found?
Which type of accidents has the greatest impact on insecurity? What type of employment relationship and in which sector did the victims work? What impact does age and gender have? Etc.
None of these questions have been answered to date. None of the warnings from the successive prefects saw the actual start of the Observatory’s activities. None of the invitations that Ravenna in the Municipality addressed to the Mayor, so that he would honor the commitment made which did not end with the removal of the potato to the prefecture, found response.
As Manzoli said, things don’t happen on their own: “You have to put in the commitment, the spirit, the will to keep promises, and your own responsibility.” All this was missed by the Mayor and the PD who had also claimed to sign our agenda in order to vote for it. It teaches how little the declarations of that party, liberal since its birth and pro-employer since its founding documents, are worth compared to the direction in which the actual actions are moving. Please stop the faithful allies from talking about themselves and telling us about alleged commitments undertaken in some renewed alliance with the PD, perhaps in defense of anti-fascism or some other noble intent. The PD’s commitment is full and consistently developed only in favor of itself and the master, according to the immortal and detestable motto of the Marquis del Grillo: “I am me and you are not a c…”.”
