Average – From Daniele Camilli’s articles to the work of Antonio Biagioli’s Uila up to Asfa, the African football sports association
Viterbo – The journalistic investigations into the Tusciaweb laborers end up on the national pages of Repubblica.
The piece is by Andrea Ossino, the title: Gangmastering, class action against the bosses in Viterbo: the laborers rebel.
“The journalist Daniele Camilli, of Tusciaweb – writes Ossino – has been telling stories like these for years. He knows the countryside and the corporals know him. This is why he was threatened: ‘You broke up, because you’re writing a lot of stuff…You have to disappear!’, it was the tone of someone who interrupted the reporter while he was doing his job.”
The Repubblica article dedicated to the laborers of Tuscia
“They spent years with their backs bent on the terrain of the Viterbo countryside – continues the Repubblica journalist -. Then they raised their backs and also their heads. They spoke to the police and knocked on the doors of the unions telling their stories, understanding what their rights were. This is the story of a community of laborers who have acquired a social conscience. It is the story of 140 workers who forced their employers to guarantee them better working conditions. And it is described in the documents that make up the proceedings which will be discussed in a preliminary hearing on June 26th in which Danilo Camilli, of the company of the same name, is the protagonist. The Viterbo prosecutors and the carabinieri who investigated the case speak of ‘exploitative conditions’”.
All in a general context where the labor issue is a social issue. From working conditions to living conditions.
Viterbo – Agricultural workers – Archive photo
“In the countryside we are divided into teams – explains Ossino – Senegalese on one side and Pakistani on the other. So we speak the same language. But above all we work. Sometimes until you die. Like last July 19th, when during a red-sticker day Naceur Messauodi fell on the hot ground at 4 pm with a watermelon still in his hand. He came from Sfax, Tunisia, and at 57 years old was struggling to make a living for his wife and daughters in his homeland. Perhaps he too has read the sign that once hung outside a bar: ‘No foreigners, no pets.’ And perhaps he too, when he was looking for a place to sleep, met someone who does not rent a house to foreigners, as reported by Antonio Biagioli, of the Uila trade union, which has been fighting for years to improve workers’ conditions and who after having explained to one of the 140 laborers the his rights, the next day he found himself in the office with dozens and dozens of exploited workers who started a sort of class action to ask the suspect for compensation.”
“In a routine composed only of work – concludes the Repubblica article – the laborers have also found a human dimension. And there is a football team, Asfa, an African football sports association, made up of those who were once divided based on nationality to work in the fields. Now, with the ball at our feet, we take to the pitch together.”
June 25, 2024
Farm workers … The articles
- African football sports association: “Give the Rocchi stadium to us…”
- City of the Popes, the mosque arrives…
- “The laborers of Tuscia donate 2 thousand euros to the Islamic community for the construction of a mosque”
- “Hossain Md Salman had come to Italy with the flow decree to work, but then they no longer hired him”
- “Calling asylum seekers illegal is discriminatory and offensive”
- Public transport, Castel d’Asso forgotten by the Francigena
- “Stop dying of work, demonstration in Piazza della Repubblica on 8 August”
- “Undeclared work emerges in the Tuscia countryside”
- “Labourers, what we have done is not enough for us and we will not stop the action alongside the workers”
- Laborers, the prefecture convenes the table against exploitation and illegal work in agriculture
- The “upside down lives” of the laborers in Tuscia, years of battles, complaints and exploitation…
- “We have never encountered serious incidents that required reporting”
- “On the Camilli farm, respect for people, the law and work ethics have always come first”
- “Exploitation of labour, the judiciary should hear Danilo Camilli on what he declared to Tusciaweb…”
- “Either do as I say or you can leave today.”
- Danilo Camilli: “If I’m the black sheep of agriculture, then it’s time to go everywhere… and you’ll see some good things”
- Exploited labourers, 540 thousand euros the sum that was to be paid to the workers
- Exploited and underpaid agricultural workers, entrepreneur Danilo Camilli investigated
- “Exploited and mistreated agricultural workers, the prefect convenes an institutional table…”
- “People’s lives and livelihoods have been continually put at risk”
- Exploited and mistreated agricultural workers, entrepreneur in trouble
- “‘No foreigners, no animals’, in Viterbo we don’t rent houses to immigrants…”
- “The right to vote in municipal elections must also be given to those who have a residence permit”
- “In Viterbo there are houses that you don’t want to rent to foreign workers…”
- “In Lazio a foreign worker gets 500 euros less than an Italian”
- “A swab costs more than double that of a plane ticket from Rome to London… round trip”
- 700 families assisted and 25 tons of food distributed, poverty in the city
- “20% of Tuscia’s laborers work more than 12 hours a day with a salary of 35 euros…”
- “I’m a quota collector and I don’t let people in without an appointment…”
- “Covid, at the beginning everyone went wild with purchases… but since November the world has stopped”
- “Protection for victims of violence, fight against gangmastering, Ramadan and fatherhood…”
- Castel d’Asso is splendid from above, as you have never seen it before…
- “We have never accepted gangmastering and we will never accept things of this kind”
- “We assisted a malnourished Indian laborer who had not received his salary for 3 years…”
- “Three euros an hour for 12 hours of work, this is how the laborers of Tuscia are exploited…”
- “My name is Boniface Okolia and I have neither a job, nor food, nor medicine”
- “Regularization of foreign workers, the risk is the buying and selling of contracts”
- “We reopened the mosque when everything was perfect…”
- “Up to 13 hours of work for 35 euros of pay per day, the life of the laborer during Phase 1”
- “He always did good, without asking anything from anyone”
- “A common prayer to remember the victims of Covid and build a world of justice”
- “It’s difficult to stay at home without eating…”
- “Camilli you have to mind your own business, you have to disappear, you’re constantly pissing me off…”
- “Islam is love of life”
- 94% of agricultural workers in Tuscia are precarious
- One hour of cycling for eleven hours of work, the life of foreign labourers
- The Sikhs conquer the city with sabers and rose petals
