ADUC – Article – Minimum product prices against agricultural gangmastering? Fantasies against the market, consumers and legality

After the events of the murder of the laborer in the Latina area, politicians remembered what they knew (the existence of exploitation of agricultural workers, especially immigrants) and the national cry spread. Without cynicism: like other times, you’ll see what happens… unless there are radical changes in immigration policies and respect for the rules that already exist for labor policies.

As if this sort of national mourning wasn’t enough, proposals have also emerged (1) to establish minimum prices for the sale of certain products in order to avoid gangmastering. This would avoid the low prices at which, for example, tomatoes are sold (400g jar at 70 cents). The impact would obviously be on the market and on consumers, who would have to spend more.

Those who propose something like this have not taken into consideration that, instead, the consequence of minimum prices would be an increase in the cost of products for consumers, but essentially a greater profit on the part of those companies that today pay 2 euros for a hour of agricultural labor and who will continue to pay similar amounts.

Because the problem is not the sales price that pushes companies to pay workers less, but companies that want to earn a lot without caring about the law, given the lack of its application. There are the cream of companies that do not exploit and kill their workers, yet they put products on the market that have competitive prices.

These sorties only serve to destroy the market, to underestimate the importance of legality, to direct the attention of the authorities elsewhere, to harm consumers, to keep criminals continuing to be criminals.

1 – Oscar Farinetti, founder of Eataly

Here is the video on Aduc’s YouTube channel