25 February 2006

Work and Dignity

Two words that I'm keen to promote throughout this election campaign are Work and Dignity.

The two words are inseparable because you can’t have work without dignity. It's not possible to work for salaries that are like charity handouts, as often happens in many Call Centres, or with the 3-monthly fear of not having the contract renewed.

The de-regulation of work has brought the younger generations to manage with temporary jobs, often without any professional content, even though they have gained a professional qualification. The only choice for many of these young people is to move abroad.

We are arriving at the point of inflicting wounds on ourselves by asking the Italian State to help educate engineers and researchers and then see them get their experience in foreign organisations.

This Government always mentions jobs as an objective that has been achieved.

The Government is talking about jobs that are imaginary.

During this election campaign I am visiting 2 or 3 different places every day and I’m only seeing factories that are closing down, manual workers being laid off (in Italian they are in “cassa integrazione”), foreign companies that are disinvesting.

This is confirmed in an analysis done by the CISL on the industry sector, from which I’ve extracted 2 items:

There are 251,175 workers who have been laid off (in “cassa integrazione”), this is an increase of 6.2%

There are 103,962 workers who have been fired or in an interim state (referred to as  “in mobilità”), this is an increase of 8.8%.

This is a desolate situation. To start again we need years of investment targeted at production activities, particularly those with a high innovation element.

And in any case the application of the Biagi law must be reconsidered urgently so that security and dignity can be restored to all workers and especially to the young ones.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Work