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.
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