Satnam Singh, a 31-year-old laborer of Indian origin, didn’t make it. He bled to death, with one arm amputated, at the San Camillo hospital in Rome due to the severity of the injuries sustained in a very serious “accident” at work which occurred in the fields of the Latina area, an area which, for at least twenty years, it is a place of immigrant work, exploited to the limits of slavery. An apparently archaic, but very modern form of work, which is tolerated and presupposes cross-responsibility at various levels: from agricultural organizations to institutions, who pretend not to see.
Or worse, who show a presentable and civil face, as happened in this case with the statements of Coldiretti, first, and then of the president of the Lazio Region and the mayor of Latina, Matilde Eleonora Celentano (Brothers of Italy). They all say they are ready to become civil parties in any possible trial. Precisely “possible”, given the current situation. In the Rai news reports, in particular in that of Tg1 at 8pm on 19 June, we heard indecent phrases: “After all, he asked for it,” said one of the owners of the many companies that use the gangmaster as an employment office. “These foreigners are too superficial, we always warn them, but they don’t listen to us”. In short, we are at the formula “she asked for it”, like when a raped woman is accused of dressing provocatively.
Now we get scandalized and utter catchphrases; However, none of which can cover or overcome the reality of the details of this crime news, such as that concerning the fruit box in which the arm of the young man abandoned by the corporals in front of his house was “deposited”.with his wife desperately screaming: “Take him to the hospital”.
Has anyone seen? Anyone see? “Latina – he wrote Marco Revelli, which has been studying the transformations of work for years – is not a remote area of the deep south. It is about fifty kilometers as the crow flies from the center of the capital, where people govern and decide. Where the centers of power and control are. Was it possible that realities like the one that marked the fate of Satnam Singh were ignored? That the comings and goings of the corporals and their staff leaders were not visible to those who should monitor the rules that they themselves give?” Where were, if there were (since there are so few) the labor inspectors – asks Revelli, and we with him. Where were the police forces and where were the regional structures (of that Region which is now offering to pay for the funerals, but which was unable to prevent the plague of gangmastering from spreading in its territory). “Finally: where has Coldiretti been so far, which has a widespread presence in the countryside and, more than anyone else, should see everything that happens there?”.
What Revelli writes, commenting on a single case in the news, could unfortunately be generalized. In fact, how many foreign and Italian workers live in conditions similar or at least comparable to those of the Sikh Indians of Latina? We are talking about work or slavery, in the era of the artificial intelligence revolution and the increasingly massive entry of robots into production?
Technically, Satnam Singh was not a slave. But he was an immigrant worker, who had no alternative to the job he had come across. One of the many workers who do not have the option of resigning. In Italy these forms of work are increasingly widespread; and moreover, from international reports, we learn that we are well placed in the rankings of actual slavery. In a recent Walk Free Foundation Global Research report, Italy took third place in the European ranking for the absolute number of slaves, after Türkiye and Poland. The debate on the “big resignations” has fascinated sociologists, the academic world and talk shows. Fortunately, there are workers who can choose and who, in the country with the lowest wages in Europe, can take the plunge. At the same time, however, there are millions of people, in Italy and around the world, who they can’t change anything, even if they want to and try.
“Driven by technical progress and an unprecedented rate of innovation – he wrote Pasquale Tridico in his recent Governing the economy. So as not to be governed by the markets (Castelvecchi editore, 2024) – economic dynamics have quickly transformed the characteristics of the labor market and its forms, as well as production processes. However, the governance underlying these processes has not changed, neither within companies nor in the institutions that regulate them. There is a perceived stalemate in the progress of the quality of life, and in many sectors a worsening of working conditions, productivity gains and therefore wages. In Italy, if we consider the period between 1990 and 2020, average wages decreased by 2.9%. Furthermore, inflation has eroded workers’ purchasing power by around 15%.”
Today, in Italy, 12% of workers are poor and 30% are at risk of poverty, due to salaries that do not exceed one thousand euros per month. “It seems that innovation, instead of reducing working hours, has led to greater intensity, hyper-connection, work-related stress” – Tridico continues. “Precarity and short contracts aggravate the condition of poor workers: in 2022 there were 4.2 million fixed-term contracts and 4.3 million workers earning gross hourly wages of less than nine euros. The data is extremely negative, especially for young people and women, particularly in the southern regions of the country.” And if Tridico can be accused of bias, let’s hear from another source, that of “voce.info”. Francis Jubilee writes that “in 2022, according to Eurostat data, Italy was in second place in Europe, behind only Romania, for the highest NEET rate (Not in education, employment or training) among young people (15-29 years). This is a chronic problem: the share of young people who do not study, work or do not follow training courses has always been very high in our country”.
At this point you might ask: and the trade union? Against precariousness and the increase in forms of underpaid and exploitative work, the CGIL launched the referendum to abolish the Jobs Act. More than five hundred thousand signatures have already been collected. Will it be a winning battle? Will it be possible to have an impact in some way in a political context in which parliament votes for the premiership and differentiated autonomy? We will see.
Meanwhile, let’s note the reaction of the Flai CGIL, that is, the one within the national organization that is closest to the idea of staking everything on the “street union” formula. Precisely on the day of the Satnam Singh tragedy, the press conference to present the initiative was organized at the Casa del Popolo in Borgo Hermada (Terracina).Rights in the field with the labor brigades”, organized by Flai CGIL, a national campaign that will involve the Lazio region. The labor brigades fall within the activity of the street union, a method with which Flai has operated for years throughout the territory, with the aim of contact as many workers as possible when they leave the workplace, in the fields, in urban centers or in the peripheral areas where they reside.
We will follow the developments of this union initiative, and of course the judicial developments of the “accident”. No one can look the other way. No one can afford rhetorical statements without any follow-up. We must begin to identify responsibilities, not only legal ones, but also social and political ones. “This is precisely a premeditated murder like the action of the individual, only a more hidden, more perfidious murder, a murder against which no one can defend themselves, which does not appear to be such, since the perpetrator cannot be seen, because he is the work of everyone and no one, because the death of the victim seems natural and because it is less a sin of action or rather a sin of omission. But it remains a premeditated murder” (F. Engels, The situation of the working class in England1845).
