There is up to 50% foreign labor behind the Made in Italy agri-food industry. Even if official data speak of 362 thousand immigrants employed in the sector, equal to 31.7% of the working days recorded, when the underground economy is taken into account the real numbers are much higher. This is what emerges from the “Made in Immigritaly” report, the first commissioned by the Fai-Cisl to the Confronti study center on immigrant workers in the agri-food sector.
Where do migrants come from?
From Parmigiano Reggiano produced with the great contribution of Indian workers, to the citrus or tomato campaigns in Southern Italy, there is no Made in Italy agri-food supply chain in which migrant labor does not play an important role. The main countries of origin still remain – in order – the Romania, Morocco, India, Albania and Senegal. But while Romanian workers are decreasing over the years, Moroccans, Indians and Albanians are growing by a few thousand, while the Senegalese are even doubling. However, agriculture is also the sector more at risk of exploitation of immigrant labor: almost half of the judicial decisions and investigations conducted between 2017 and 2021 concerned work in the fields. The regions of the South are the most affected, but exploitation has also grown in the Centre-North. If in 2017, out of 14 proceedings, 12 concerned the South, in 2021 we have moved to a ratio of 28 out of 49. It is no longer just a question of traditional gangmastering: from the FAI report, more and more new forms of illicit procurement and subcontracting are emerging, orchestrated through front companies registered in the name of frontmen or false cooperatives.
«The work of immigrants in the national agro-industry supply chains remains largely invisible – said the general secretary of the Fai-Cisl, Onofrio Rota, at the presentation of the report yesterday at the CNEL – but the data collected demonstrate the essential character of the immigrant contribution to Made in Italy”. For this reason, claims the general secretary of the CISL, Luigi Sbarra, we need to move away from “the banalization of the migratory phenomenon as an invasion, of immigrants seen only as subjects who steal jobs from Italians: the reality of the agri-food supply chains demonstrates the central role and in many cases irreplaceable aspect of migrant work”.
The workforce requirement
The exploitation of immigration also confronts national politics to the challenge of regularization of the workforce that the country evidently demonstrates it needs. «Half of the work input in the agri-food sector comes from immigrants and we often don’t have the courage to say it – said the president of the CNEL, Renato Brunetta – let’s think about what this sector could be if we had regulated migrations, included in valorization paths and transparency processes”. Even the Minister of Agriculture, Francesco Lollobrigida, admits the sector’s need for workforce: «This government – he said yesterday speaking at the presentation of the FAI report – has managed to increase the quotas of flows of immigrant workers, in particular in agriculture. But training is fundamental: workers who want to come to Italy must have a clear path to get there and have training conditions upstream as well
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2024-04-12 18:31:36