Landini blasts off-book workers, says 'enough' (3)

(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.
    Meloni announced Thursday that the government has approved the recruitment of 1,600 new labour inspectors, amid an alarm about a spate of workplace deaths in Italy.
    Concern has been heightened by Sigh's death last month.
    "In the last few months we ordered the hiring of 1,600 more labour inspectors, with the the goal of doubling the number of inspections done during 2024," Meloni said in a message to a ceremony commemorating the victims of workplace accidents at the Lower House.
    Police on Tuesday arrested the owner of the agricultural company that employed and allegedly exploited Singh.
    The alleged gangmaster, Antonello Lovato, was arrested on suspicion of causing Singh's manslaughter death.
    Prosecutors said in a statement that Singh, who died of a massive haemorrghage in a Rome hospital, "would in all likelihood have been saved if he had been promptly assisted".
    The prosecutors said Lovato had not helped Singh because he "was afraid that the extremely serious irregularities of the company regarding job safety and workers' health would come to light".
    Centre-left opposition Democratic Party (PD) chief Elly Schlein and her erstwhile ally, leftist populist opposition 5-Star Movement (M5S) leader Giuseppe Conte have joined trade unions in urging Meloni to act to root out the sometimes brutal exploitation of mainly immigrant farm workers across the country.
    Most, but not all, of the gangmastered workers toil away in the south of Italy, where most of Italy's tomato and water melon fields are located.
    However, the phenomenon has also affected more affluent northern regions including Veneto.
    Labour Minister Marina Calderone said Saturday that "there is a workplace deaths emergency, but it is falling," spurring protests from the PD.
    She said two thirds of Italian farms were irregular, and that synergies and an ad hoc commissioner were needed against gangmastering.
    Schlein and Conte have been pressing alongside the trade unions like CGIL to get Meloni to take effective action against gangmasters.
    Schlein said "we still sadly haven't got an answer, we asked the premier more than once to work together on these priorities, workplace safety, which means investing more resources and having more controls.
    "What happened is not an accident.
    "We need a civic uprising by the whole country, all the institutions and society must react together".
    Conte, a former two-time premier with contrasting administrations, said he expected "words and strong stances from Meloni".
    He wrote on X: "You lose your arm while you're working in the fields for four euros an hour. You're not immediately treated.
    They put you in a van and they dump you like rubbish outside your home. Beside you, a strawberry basket in which your severed arm is left. You bleed out and die.
    "It sounds like the story of a slave centuries ago. We can't close our eyes, we can't think about making profits while cancelling the dignity of work and the last shreds of humanity.
    "If we ignore these atrocities, we will stop defending Italy and its values.
    "We are ready to do our bit in parliament against these barbarities, which must be rooted out of the fields all over Italy".
    Meloni subseuquently said Singh was the victim of "inhuman acts." But her brother in law, and bigwig in her rightwing Brothers of Italy (FdI) party, Agriculture Minister Francesco Lollobrigida, warned against tarring all farmers with the same brush.
    Lollobrigida said Singh had been killed by "a criminal".
    Speaking at a press conference with Calderone after talks on Singh's death and gangmastering with unions and employers, Lollobrigida said: "In these situations it can happen that there is a criminalisation of one of the links in the chain.
    "It can happen, therefore, that when faced with serious episodes like the one at Latina, all the agricultural enterprises are criminalised.
    "These deaths aren't the fault of agricultural entrepreneurs.
    "They are the fault of criminals". (ANSA).