(ANSA) - ROME, JUL 6 - It is time to say "enough" with more
than three million workers in Italy being employed off the books
in Italy, CGIL union chief Maurizio Landini said at an
anti-gangmastering rally Saturday in Latina, the town south of
Rome where a 31-year-old Indian off-the-books labourer bled out
after being dumped by his alleged gangmaster outside his hut
with an arm severed by a wrapping machine laid beside him on a
fruit box.
"The people forced to work illegally in Italy are 3 million,"
said Landini at the rally in the memory of Satnam Singh.
"We are talking about all sectors and the whole country, not
just agriculture. It's time to say enough is enough, it's time
for governments, institutions at every level, everyone to stop
being ostriches and to cancel those baloney laws that have
favoured this system in recent years.
'The number of inspectors is very low. They can inspect a
company every 16 years,' he added, stressing that the numbers
announced by Premier Giorgia Meloni (1,600 more inspectors)
"have been going around for three years, they are not enough
because in recent years they have continued to cut".
Landini reiterated a centre-left political opposition call for
the repeal of the Bossi-Fini law on immigration that he repeated
criminalises thousands of migrants each year.
He also called for a "permanent summit" on gangmastering after
Singh's horror death shocked the nation.
A new law against the phenomenon was needed, said Landini.
CGIL is the biggest and most leftwing of Italy's three big trade
union confederations.
The Latina rally was titled "let's stop a system of doing
business that exploits and kills".
Singh is not the only gangmastered worker who has died on the
job in recent years, with the plight of migrant farm hands
particularly severe in the south of the country, but not only.
(ANSA).
3 mn off-book workers, time to say enough says Landini
Very few inspectors, they check one company every 16 years