The very serious accident at work which occurred on 6 May in
Casteldaccia (Palermo), in which 5 workers died, while a sixth was inserious condition, has once again thrown the backwardness of working
conditions in Italy in the face of all of us. The 1,041 deaths last year
are just the tip of an iceberg made up of hundreds of thousands of
accidents, of workers maimed, disabled, injured in more or less serious
ways. ---- The events in Casteldaccia are well known: a team of workers
from the Il Quadrifoglio company, which has sewerage maintenance
contracted by AMAP (the company that manages the water system), entered
a manhole; one after the other, the 6 workers, including one of the
owners of the company, were hit by hydrogen sulphide fumes, 5 of whom
died instantly. Nobody had protective equipment, they were probably calm
given that they had already apparently entered the same well twice more;
but this carelessness (which we don't know if it was consolidated
practice) cost the lives of five people. In retrospect it is said that
that activity was not included in the tender specifications; that Il
Qadrifoglio acted as a subcontractor...
It is right to remember their names: Giuseppe La Barbera, 28 years old,
Epifanio Alsazia, 71 years old, Ignazio Giordano, 57 years old, Giuseppe
Miraglia, 47 years old, Roberto Raneri, 51 years old.
The episode refers us to a similar one that occurred on 11 June 2008 in
Mineo, which also affected us closely not only because one of the six
deceased workers was from Ragusa, Salvatore Tumino, 47 years old, but
because the company responsible for the intervention in the the purifier
of the Etna town was also from Ragusa, Carfì ecological services. Two
employees of the Iblea company lost their lives together with 4 other
municipal employees, poisoned by hydrogen sulphide. The names of the
other victims: Giuseppe Smecca, 47 years old, Giuseppe Zaccaria, 47
years old, Giovanni Natale Sofia, 37 years old, Giuseppe Palermo, 57
years old, Salvatore Pulici, 37 years old.
It is impressive how, 16 years later, events repeat themselves according
to a pre-established script.
In Mineo none of the victims had been trained for the activities to be
carried out that day; They did not have masks or breathing apparatus and
did not wear harnesses connected to cables, to allow recovery in case of
illness. There was no signage on the precautions to take. In
Casteldaccia the scene is dramatically repeated. Yet how many words were
wasted after each accident, especially when it involved collective
tragedies; words that were never followed by deeds.
After the Mineo massacre, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi sent the
Minister of Labor to the town and declared: «The families deserve
closeness and also concrete help from me personally and from the
government». «Enough with the massacres at work», thundered the
President of the Republic Giorgio Napolitano. The secretary of the CISL
Raffaele Bonanni declared indignantly: "The whole country must rebel
against this trend." Over the years the cliché has been repeated, only
the subjects have changed (although not the roles).
To be honest, the few facts followed have worsened the situation: recent
legislative interventions by the Meloni government have cleared
subcontracting, legalizing a situation at the origin of the majority of
accidents.
To all must be added the precarious condition in which the labor market
is immersed, the loss of effectiveness of contracts, the search for
profit to the detriment of security and wages.
But a reflection must be made on the state of absolute inadequacy of the
bodies responsible for controlling companies. In Sicily there are around
80 inspectors, out of a requirement of 270! It's true, they are assisted
by Carabinieri inspectors, but the reality is that these 80 inspectors
should check 340,000 companies, 4,303 a year for each, 12 a day; mission
impossible if you consider that a serious check takes at least a week.
Moral of the story? Each company is audited on average once every 20
years! Who to blame for these shortcomings if not the governments that
have dismantled the control and prevention system?
The Mineo tragedy, however, also reminds us of another of the
distortions of the system revolving around workplace massacres: the
judicial one.
It took 12 and a half years for the trial process to be concluded: three
levels of judgement, with a double appeal and a double trip to the Court
of Cassation; the verdict arrived on November 20, 2020 and was filed on
October 13, 2021. A maximum sentence of 3 years for the municipal
councilor and two years for the managers of the municipal branch; 3
years and three months for the owner of the Carfì company and his
construction site manager. No one ended up in prison.
I don't like prison and I don't intend to make a gallows speech,
therefore alternative, re-educational and compensatory sentences are
welcome; but this sentence demonstrates how not even six dead people can
find the peace of a just sentence. What else is substantial impunity if
not an incitement to continue with the irresponsible behavior we know?
In short, those dead were also looking for justice! And who knows when
(and if) the compensation for the families will come.
The hypocrisy that leaks out from official statements these days hurts
our stomach and hurts our intelligence and our sensitivity. The
occasional phrases, the fake commitments, the false anger, the drama of
state indignation are unable to erase the blood that stains the hands of
a political class which, in its various declinations, has made work a
battlefield, it has made the lives of millions of people more
precarious, it has lowered the safety threshold by legalizing
increasingly worse conditions of exploitation (with outsourcing and
contracts) in the name of competition, of the god market, of the god
profit. Nor can the so-called "most representative" trade unions feel
absolved, who for years have been signing low-cost contracts, or keeping
them blocked, accepting any type of deregulation; they do not take
concrete action to defend wages, rights and the exit from
precariousness. Four fiery rhetorical declarations after each death do
not even wash away their objective and subjective responsibility.
Much more is needed; we need a street response that aims to undermine
the pro-employer legislation that has trampled on the rights and
achievements of workers, of which those on safety should be the first
ever, unquestionable and untouchable.
Pippo Gurrieri
from "Dialogo", Modica, May 2024.
https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
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