#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #ITALY #SICILIA #ANARCHISM #LIBRARY #News #Journal #Update - (en) Italy, Sicilia Libertaria: Deaths, Injuries... (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 When reflecting on deaths, injuries and illnesses caused by working conditions,

one must take into account the fact that, unless one is directly involved, the
information we have is of two types. ---- What strikes "public opinion" the most
is the media management of individual cases. ---- Think, for example, of the case
of Luana D'Orazio, a pretty young worker, mother, who died in May 2021 in a
textile company in Prato because the warper she was in charge of did not have the
barriers security deactivated. --- It is evident, in my opinion, that they were
deactivated to increase labor productivity even if the defense obviously argued
during the trial that followed the death that this was to make the work of the
workers "easier" and of the workers and the court adopted, which does not
surprise me at all, the arguments of the defense by issuing a light sentence to
the owners of the company and closing the legal dispute with compensation for the
family.

In any case, the story of Luana D'Orazio interested the media, moved those who
followed it and constituted a "case".

And it is precisely this aspect of the story that interests me to highlight, the
spectacularization of a death, reducing it to a human case.

On the other hand, there was an intervention by the President of the Republic
Sergio Mattarella who, with his classic style of a noble father, stated on June
3, 2021 on the occasion of the Republic Day:

"Still too many injustices. More inequalities. Still unbearable conditions for
the collective conscience, such as tax evasion or deaths at work. The memory of
Luana D'Orazio's smile commits everyone to the duty to address the issue of
worker safety with determination and rigour"

Let's move on to information, shall we say, neutral, to sad statistics, to data.
Very schematically.

In the first eight months of 2022, the situation of deaths at work, in the wake
of the sharp decrease in cases from Covid, stood at lower values than the
previous year but in the last five years the number of victims has grown by 15.5
% from 1,178 in 2017 to 1,361 last year, passing through the peak of 1,684 deaths
in 2020, a value that has not even been recorded in our country since the 1980s.

In total, there were 484,561 injuries reported in the January-August period (i.e.
2,019 per day), with an increase of 38.7% compared to 349,449 in the first eight
months of 2021. There were 39,367 occupational diseases (+7.9% ).

I believe that there isn't really much to say about these data, deaths, injuries,
occupational diseases, despite the much-vaunted technological development and the
mythologized "immaterial work", have a very heavy impact on the life of our
class, an impact that not even starts to decrease.

Every time the data is published there is a choral tearing of clothes, a series
of commitments for the situation to change with the effect that it does not
change, essentially absolutely nothing.

To give an example, Pope Francis during the meeting with ANCE, the National
Association of Building Builders in January 2022 states

"Even construction sites have known tragedies that we cannot ignore.
Unfortunately, if you look at workplace safety as a cost, you are starting from
the wrong assumption. The real wealth is people: without them there is no
community of work, there is no business, there is no economy. Safety in the
workplace means custody of human resources, which are of inestimable value in the
eyes of God and also in the eyes of true entrepreneurs. Last year there were
many, too many dead. They're not numbers, they're people."

I admit that, reading it, I could not hold back a smile, I imagine the
availability of the bosses of a sector which is in the leading group of those
characterized by a high incidence of workplace deaths who repent of their greed,
become "true entrepreneurs" and they understand that "true wealth is people".

For my part I suspect that the miracle of St. Francis and the wolf has not been
repeated.

The President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, expressed himself in similar
tones in the message sent to the president of the National Association of
Mutilated Workers and Disabled Workers, Zoello Forni on 10 October 2021

"A lacerating social wound. Today is the national day for victims of accidents at
work which, like every year, wants to commemorate those who have lost their lives
or suffered injuries while carrying out their work. A social wound that has no
solution, but unfortunately it is always on the increase and becomes excruciating
every time we learn, as in recent weeks, daily and dramatic updates of accidents
that have occurred".

The banal question is why "unfortunately" this "social wound" is always worsening.

To this de facto situation the response that has been repeated for decades is
sinfully cloying, the legislation must be changed, personnel must be hired in the
bodies responsible for safety in the workplace in order to guarantee controls,
the training of workers must be improved. The beauty, the place is beautiful,
what changes there have been, the representatives of the workers for safety (RLS)
were born, etc. And, with all this, as is evident, we are at the head of twelve.

In my opinion, from a radically different point of view, we have to deal with two
precise problems:

what, in a "strict" way, is defined as the technical composition of the class and
that is the existence of large sectors of contracted work, undeclared, in very
small companies, formally autonomous but in fact subordinate. A world that sees
appalling pressure on workers and that escapes all control;

the current weakness of the workers' movement, the corruption of a large part of
the state bureaucracy and of the union apparatus itself, which all too easily
bend to corporate needs.

And it is precisely on this terrain that action must be taken both on the level
of direct organization on class terrain and by building relationships and sectors
of the technical-scientific world which give an absolutely necessary contribution
of knowledge.

A difficult but unavoidable challenge.

Cosimo Scarinzi

https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
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