Photo by Vincenzo Montefinese
The death of Satnam Singh shocks and outrages, putting the spotlight back on a phenomenon that of agricultural exploitation is growing and increasingly widespread in Italy: it affected 1 in 6 exploited laborers in 2018, 1 in 4 in 2022 (Placido Rizzotto Observatory), of which 80% are migrants. WeWorld, which for 50 years has brought those on the margins to the center in over 25 countries around the world, including Italy, has told this in four reports created with Marco Omizzolo and other researchers published in the last two years which, starting precisely from Agro Pontino, they also touched the Sele plain countryside in Campania to the south and Tuscany to the north.
Different contexts, different fruit and vegetable supply chains, from fourth range – that of salads washed and ready to be consumed – to that of grapes for the production of Tuscan wines. There are different shades, from black to grey, because this is how working relationships are characterized: laborers without any contract (illegal work) as in the case of Satnam Singh and laborers with pay slips showing only a small portion of the hours actually worked (grey work). However, the mechanisms and relationships of exploitation are the same, with illicit intermediation systems for labourers dominated by corporals which are flanked, more recently, by “contractor” or “landless agricultural companies”, which supply labor mainly of foreign origin through regular contracts, but at very low costs which translate into exploitative conditions.
In the Agropontino countryside, the Indian, Romanian and Nigerian workers they tell us 16-hour working days, 7 days a week for 4.5-5 euros per hour. We work on our knees all day with very short breaks, or at heights in unacceptable safety conditions, in some periods enduring extreme temperatures or in greenhouses where men and women breathe pesticides without personal protective equipment.
“Another problem was injuries. If you had an injury you couldn’t do anything, they didn’t take you to hospital. This is true, from what I’ve heard from my husband’s friends, for many companies, not just the one I worked for. A worker once cut his finger. The boss gave him some water, a handkerchief and accompanied him home asking him not to go to the emergency room.” This is the testimony that WeWorld collected from an Indian laborer from the province of Latina.
“Every now and then there were also some injuries. I myself have fallen several times from the tractor, or into the canals that surrounded the land but there have never been any complaints or hospitalizations and none of us have ever been taken to the emergency room. You never go to the emergency room or if you go the boss tells you that you have to declare that you were injured at home,” says another Indian laborer interviewed together with Marco Omizzolo in the very lands where the tragedy of the young Satnam Singh took place.
“We told the phenomenon through the female gaze (Immigrant farm workers have grown by 200% in ten yearsfrom 2028), where racial discrimination is combined with gender discrimination, and sexual violence is added to the violence perpetrated against men: from insults, to groping, to rape. Men and women treated like toolsobjectified in a system of true patronal subordination, discrimination, violence.
In the various forms of exploitation, control, silence, humiliation, intimidation and blackmail represent generalized tools of pressure and repression aimed at strengthening isolation and avoiding forms of rebellion”, says Margherita Romanelli, Coordinator of strategic programming, advocacy and WeWorld partnerships.
It is in this context that we must read the death of Satnam Singh. It is the result of a system where the economic objectives of reducing costs to the bone converge, the racism in which immigrants, especially if of distant origins, are considered people of inferior categories according to a precise hierarchy on an ethnic basis and a framework of laws, starting from the Bossi-Fini law on immigration and the subsequent repressive measures which hinder the regularization of migrants on the territory, marginalizing them and ghettoizing them even though they represent a workforce widely employed in many sectors such as agriculture.
It is embodied in an extractivist economic model, characterized by long and often opaque value chains, highly competitive and dominated by concentrations of market power, including large-scale retail trade, in which the production of the agricultural product is remunerated no more than 5% (ISMEA , 2019) of the selling price. In some cases, agromafias also find space with a business worth 24.5 billion euros a year in Italy (Eurispes, 2018).
It should not be forgotten cultural connivance of the communities in which migrants live and work which “tolerates” mechanisms of exploitation and ensures benefits not only to agricultural entrepreneurs, but also to those who rent properties to immigrants without a contract, or enjoy irregular and low-cost caregiving services.
We do not want to remain silent about the presence on Italian territory of practices that are highly detrimental to dignity and rights and continues to be underestimated by the Italian government and the related migration and labor policies.
The situation in the Agro Pontino has been reported for some time. It is necessary to raise our voices and make requests for urgent intervention from the institutions. WeWorld stands alongside the migrants who suffer such violence, in the province of Latina, and in other Italian countryside.
Let’s ask direct and decisive interventions to condemn and eradicate the exploitation of all people in the workplace with the increase of resources to ensure greater controls, a more effective application of the law on gangmastering and safety at work, an effective mechanism that conditions the provision of financing in agriculture in compliance with laws on labor and human rights in line with the new Common Agricultural Policy. AND It is urgent to ensure complete protection for those who report and for the victims. Furthermore, it is necessary to review the legislative framework on immigration which must be aimed at protecting the rights and dignity in particular of marginalized and more vulnerable workers.
The Government will also work towards an ambitious Italian law that implements the recent directive on corporate due diligence regarding human rights (CSDD), capable of preventing all forms of exploitation and ensuring more complete compensation for victims. As we explain in Business and Human Rights. A system moving towards the EU directive (Second Report of the Permanent Observatory on corporate policies and strategies regarding Human Rights (Oiidu, 2024) the law could offer a further valuable tool against gangmastering and serious forms of rights violation humans in business practices.
Furthermore, if at the same time we do not act on the cultural processes that produce forms of inhumanity that Singh’s tragedy brings us, we will not be able to make real change.
All this cannot be done without the active involvement of civil society, migrant associations, trade unions, local institutions and communities. WeWorld continues to work on all levels by raising awareness, reporting, asking institutions, the private sector and consumers to convincingly embrace development models aimed at sustainable well-being and coexistence.
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