Many words but, still, little concreteness. This is essentially the outcome of the roundtable convened at the Ministry of Labor after the death of the Indian laborer Satnam Singh in the province of Latina. A table strongly supported by the trade unions, Flai-Cgil, Fai-Cisl and Uila Uil and convened closely by the Minister of Labor and Social Policies Marina Elvira Calderone, in which the Minister of Agriculture and Sovereignty also participated Alimentare, Francesco Lollobrigida, and the business representatives.
Everyone’s aim is to declare war on gangmastering and intensify all the actions against a system that degrades work, puts human lives at risk and does not increase the quality of work in a very important sector such as agriculture. ” said Minister Calderone. Calderone added that controls are being “intensified, we have increased the number of inspectors hired. The competitions have already been announced and will be on a regional basis. We will strengthen all regional inspectorates.” Furthermore, the minister said, we will focus on a “careful, timely, synergistic consultation of the available databases, including those that the Ministry of Agriculture will give us with Agea”. Furthermore, it is intended to “strengthen the quantitative agricultural network, because the fight against gangmastering also involves supporting those who regularly manage work activities and especially agriculture”.
Today’s table – said Minister Lollobrigida – “is an open table, which makes the skills of each sector available for even immediate solutions and course corrections with respect to rules whose existence everyone claims, but at the same time ‘inapplication or ineffectiveness’. Lollobrigida highlighted the need to also work “on the workforce arriving from third countries, providing them with training also on trade union rights, as well as on basic knowledge of the Italian language so that they can, for example, help and rescue”. The minister also highlighted unfair competition from other countries and reiterated that in Europe “we ask that respect for human rights and workers’ rights be included in imports and trade agreements”.
On the trade union front, Flai-Cgil, through Davide Fitti, national secretary, states its dissatisfaction with the outcome of the inter-ministerial table. “We appreciate the call by the government – he said – which evidently recognized the existence of an extremely serious situation. At the same time, mostly promises have arrived.”
For Flai Cgil “a modification of Bossi-Fini is not enough. As long as the cornerstones of the law remain in place, including the so-called ‘flow decree’, which is proving to be insufficient and even harmful, too many workers will continue to be invisible, with their residence permit always at risk, easy prey to gangmasters and unscrupulous entrepreneurs. Furthermore, no commitment has been made on the Pnrr funds allocated for overcoming that authentic shame that are the ‘informal settlements’, real ghettos where thousands and thousands of migrants survive in miserable conditions, unworthy of a civilized country”.
“We are outraged by what happened and we sympathize with the family of the dead laborer and the entire Indian community, but if we really want to eradicate the scourge of gangmastering it is important not to act on the wave of emotion – said the general secretary of the Fai-Cisl, Onofrio Rota – because the phenomenon, as we have been denouncing for years, is rooted in specific crops and territories, therefore a structural response is needed. We ask the Government first of all to enhance the cross-referencing of data and accelerate the measures planned for the efficiency of the Labor Inspectorate and those planned with the Pnrr for workers’ housing, then the click day policies for the flow decrees must be overcome: if we really want to declare war on exploitation we must start above all from an effective emergence of those who become irregular, because those who want to work and have not committed crimes cannot remain in limbo when their contracts expire, we are talking about people whose dignity and inclusion we must recognize, otherwise they we find ourselves in the many ghettos scattered throughout the area. Then the bilateral agricultural bodies, present in each province, must be involved to govern the meeting between supply and demand for work with efficiency and transparency. Furthermore, the territorial protocols against gangmastering must be implemented in all their parts, as well as for the control rooms, which serve to multiply the good practices of transport, accommodation and contractualization of workers, also in the interests of the many agricultural companies that operate legally and they suffer unfair competition from those who do not apply contracts. Finally, we need a more rewarding system for companies registered in the INPS quality agricultural work network”.
“We appreciate the timeliness of the call that arrived following our joint statement” explained the general secretary of Uila, Enrica Mammuccari. “We also appreciated the willingness of the entire business system to participate on June 25th in Latina when there will be an event with the entire Indian community. It is a battle – explained Mammuccari – that cannot be won alone, but a synergistic alliance of all social partners is needed so that our Made in Italy smells of legality. We are less satisfied with the fact that sometimes communication wins over concrete actions. We must ensure that those who are victims of exploitation are immediately issued special permits, to also have the possibility of integrating.”
