WORLD WORLDWIDE ITALY News Journal Update - (en) Italy, Alternativa Libertaria/FdCA #22: Working in sport is work: there are no "odd jobs" - A sports worker (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 We talk about sport all the time, it's probably one of the few things

that, in today's social desert, still manages to keep together the
shapeless mass of individuals that we have now become and who are
unlikely to be interested in what happens beyond their shadow, or in any
case beyond the screen of their smartphones. ---- On social media, on
television, in newspapers: the main topic is sport. ---- But how do we
talk about sport? Because we can talk about sport in many ways, just as
there are many facets from which we can observe this world.
There is professional sport, where a small number of human beings are
elevated to the status of demigods by virtue of their particular
ability, which can be kicking a ball, throwing another into a basket
with holes placed at a certain height from the ground , hitting a ball
with a specific tool (rackets, clubs of all types, etc.): human beings
who are able to excel in these activities receive stratospheric
compensation, even 1000 times higher than the compensation of us mere
mortals. It deserves a separate discussion, as professional sport
perhaps highlights the evolutions and dynamics of capitalism better than
other sectors.
Then there is basic, amateur sport, the one that has the most positive
effects both for the well-being of the individual and from a social
point of view. But also the one in which a large number of workers are
hiding who until a few months ago had no protection.
The issue of sports workers has emerged recently with the Covid-19
pandemic; on that occasion we began to become aware that, by closing
gyms and other meeting places where sporting activities are practiced, a
significant number of people are left without receiving any
compensation. It turns out that, behind the swimming instructor, the
gymnastics coach, the coach of the "chicks" of the neighborhood football
team, there are workers who, in addition to doing this activity out of
passion and love of sport, they also do it because they need it to make
a living. And it also turns out that for many workers it is not a second
job or a "job", but constitutes the only source of income; It's a shame
that in 2020, during the pandemic, sports workers could be classified as
amateurs, therefore essentially as volunteers who receive compensation,
but without any form of protection.
During the pandemic, this meant that these workers could not request the
social protection institutions provided for other sectors of the world
of work, such as the NASPI or the redundancy fund; precisely to try to
overcome this enormous problem, the various emergency measures
implemented during the pandemic established a bonus for this category of
workers.
Also during the pandemic, in 2021, we have an important legislative
provision which would seem (the conditional is a must of course) to give
dignity to those who work in the world of amateur sport: Legislative
Decree 36/2021, the so-called "Reform of Sport" who must be given the
credit for erasing the ambiguous figure of the amateur, that is, those
who carry out sporting work like a volunteer, but can receive compensation.
This decree in fact identifies two forms of collaboration within the
world of sport, the worker and the volunteer, defining them in the
following ways:
- the sports worker is "the athlete, the coach, the instructor, the
technical director, the sports director, the athletic trainer and the
match director who, without any gender distinction and regardless of the
professional or amateur sector, exercises sporting activity for a fee",
with the exclusion of administrative and management tasks;
- the volunteer is someone who makes "his/her time and skills available
to promote sport, in a personal, spontaneous and free way, without
profit, not even indirect, but exclusively for amateur purposes", for
whose activities " Only documented expenses relating to food,
accommodation, travel and transport incurred for services carried out
outside the municipal territory of residence can be reimbursed".
So can we celebrate victory? Affirming that sports work has its dignity
like any job, as it should be? Which is absolutely not a "job", an
insidious term with which too often pockets of poorly paid and exploited
work are hidden?

The answer is no. Absolutely not. No, because "special" social security,
tax and insurance systems continue to persist for these workers, meaning
with this term only and exclusively unfavorable conditions for those
women and men who, despite carrying out their work, continue to
experience a condition of substantial precariousness and a gloomy future
for pensioners and pensioners.
Moreover, the very genesis of Legislative Decree 36/2021 was entirely a
program: already in the first draft of the decree, the entry into force
of the rules relating to the new discipline of sports work was scheduled
for 1 July 2022, more than a year after the entry into force of the
decree itself, dated 2 April 2021. The Decree has then undergone various
modifications and reworks, the entry into force of the aforementioned
rules has been postponed several times, which finally manage to come
into force on the 1st July 2023.
And so, just as sport makes its entry into the Constitution, with the
modification of the art. 33 which now establishes that "the Republic
recognizes the educational, social and promotional value of
psychophysical well-being of sporting activity in all its forms", at the
same time the much vaunted Sports Reform introduced by Legislative
Decree 36/2021 does not It absolutely removes the annoying and
hypocritical label of "chore" from sports work.
To the more than 700 thousand sports workers in Italy, in particular
those engaged in real sport, the one outside the pomp and illogical
excesses of the sports industry, the one that truly promotes the
educational and social value of psychophysical well-being, well to these
workers there is only one card left to play: that of organization and
solidarity, to claim what is theirs, to claim what workers all over the
world have been asking for over a century: bread and roses!

Il Cantiere n. 20 ottobre 2023 ilcantiere@autistici.org

http://alternativalibertaria.fdca.it/
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