Gangmastering and subcontracting, a drama especially in Northern and Central Italy, as well as agriculture in the South
The case that hit the Giorgio Armani operations, we are talking about the production of bags and accessories subcontracted to companies that in turn do so they supported factories that exploited Chinese labor, it is not isolated.
Among the sensational events of just the last few months, it should be remembered that in January the fashion company Alviero Martini spa was supported by judicial administrators. We are talking about a history of luxury bags, manufactured by exploited Chinese, paid 1.25 euros for each upper and 50 cents for each buckle. Alviero Martini spa was not investigated or aware of what was happening in the subcontracting companies. And the memory of those who died from the collapse in Florence is still alive of the Esselunga shipyard: it was estimated there were 30 subcontracted companies.
The mechanism emerges in high fashion as in many other sectors. In Italy it is difficult to talk about or even just survey the phenomena of subcontracting and gangmastering, which in many cases go hand in hand. Doing it now is half a miracle. The late procurement expert, perhaps the good one around, Ivan Ciccone spent years describing a system “that almost no one intends to stop”, he always said. Anac tried to survey the phenomenon a few years ago, with a more unique than rare work, in a data collection categorized by subcontracting, legal form of the companies, average contract amounts, regional areas in which they operate.
The current regulatory framework, post-2011, with the EU wanting greater competition and therefore gives the green light to more subcontracts, has further worsened the context described.
When the work is declared and clear, we start from the territorial location, observing all sectors. Lombardy, with 2,276 subcontracts, is the region in which the mechanism is used the most, followed by Piedmont with 1,201, then there is Tuscany with 659, Lazio with 394, Liguria with 374, Puglia with 172, Emilia Romagna with 171 and Marche with 165. Followed by the other regions with smaller numbers. A mechanism that is exercised above all in the Centre-North.
For the legal form however the joint-stock companies are 1,943, 44.7% of the system; limited partnerships by shares 75, 1.7%; limited liability companies 1,727, 39.7%; joint-stock companies 141, 3.2%; partnerships 777, 17.9%; individual businesses 1,139, 26.2%; cooperative companies and consortia 106, 2.4%; the other forms 31, 0.7; unclassified 350, 8.0%.
Here are the subcontracted contracts analyzed and the amounts by amount class, based on the reference tender: 6 contracts range from 15 to 20 million euros; 5 contracts from 5 to 15 million euros; there are 599 contracts from 1 million to 5; from half a million euros to one million there are 576 contracts; 1375 contracts from 150,000 to 500,000 euros.
Needless to say, the most significant amounts in terms of weight and quality are all located in Northern and Central Italy.
A system that changes further today, thanks to the EU, despite the Italian government's attempt at opposition. The EU has imposed a system of freer subcontracting in its member countries to encourage competition. But this has been grafted onto systems, such as the Italian one, already with particular critical issues. With Code 36/2023 which changes the Italian procurement legislation, each subcontractor in turn can entrust “the execution of part of the services or works covered by the procurement contract to third parties, with the organization of means and risks borne by the subcontractor”. The 2016 Procurement Code instead said that, “the execution of the services subcontracted cannot be the subject of further subcontracting”. Now this rule no longer exists.
But subcontracting is only one side of the coin: there is also gangmastering. Even just a few years the Ministry of Agriculture declared that around 400,000 workers ended up in the agricultural gangmaster system. But there's something more.
In 2021 the Laboratory on labor exploitation, promoted by the inter-university research center l'Altro Diritto and Flai CGIL, monitored 260 judicial investigations opened by prosecutors throughout Italy to understand the phenomenon of gangmastering. The most critical situations are always located in the North and Center: in Emilia Romagna, Piedmont, Tuscany, Lombardy.
In the report the stories overlap and deal not only with investigations of exploitation in the style of the southern countryside, the Tuscan and Campania textile sectors, waiters, bartenders, counter clerks, workers loading and unloading goods, bakers, shop assistants in central Italy. They range from stories of exploitation where the Bocconi-educated entrepreneur exploits the immigrant, calling him a “shitty nigger” (for a strawberry picking business a few kilometers from Milan Cathedral, not in the southern countryside) to a system of companies that goes as far as Uber. Even the book sector is involved. We are in 2018, in the Stradella logistics hub, near Pavia, with 700 workers on strike which blocked supplies in Italian bookstores for six days. “The numbers are scary: workers had to move up to 10,000 books in 12-hour shifts,” the report says. “At night, my partner he always saw me cry because I had pain everywhere, in particular severe pain in the arms and legs. I was being treated at the hospital,” says a voice reported in the investigation papers, writes the curator of the work, Antonello Mangano.
Finally, the large naval contracts, where the Bangladeshi workers, denounce a system that starts from small subcontracted companies and ends at the number one giant in the sector: Fincantieri. A general mechanism that should be stopped but which seems inherent to the development system in which we live.
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