WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE ITALY - news journal UPDATE - (en) Italy, FAI, Umanita Nova #15-25 - People continue to die in the quarries. Veterans of the war of capital (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 The tragic count of victims who lose their lives on the job continues,

in an inexorable hemorrhage that is increasingly widening. Workers are
the category of workers most exposed to the risk of accidents, the
construction sector is the most affected, and the transport and
manufacturing sectors are no less so. We are witnessing this sad
paradox: there is little work or, better, there is no work for everyone,
but often those who have a job are exploited and perhaps lose their
lives, in this daily "privilege" that capital has given us.

There are 210 deaths at work in 2025 at the time of writing, 191 in the
usual period of 2024: a war bulletin. These general considerations are
exacerbated and are characterized more in the so-called depressed areas,
little work, a lot of exploitation and the usual blood tribute. The
province of Massa Carrara is the emblem of this, whose driving force of
the economy is mining, a sector with low labor intensity and high
capital intensity, but above all a sector that has the negative record
of fatal accidents and permanent disabilities, surpassing even the
construction sector in this latest tragic ranking. We are talking about
a sector that on the mountain employs 800 quarrymen, and on the plain
between cutting, shaping and finishing employs 1300 stone workers. Then
there is the commercial part, made up of sellers and entrepreneurs:
those who get rich.

Beyond cold numbers, statistics and percentages, which however serve to
have a partial picture of the quarry panorama, it is important to
underline the drama unleashed by the mourning event that spills over to
family members, friends, work colleagues, that part of society of which
the deceased was a part. We work to live, we do not live to work, much
less do we work to die. The environmental factor in the quarry is
crucial for the organization of safety; extraction takes place in places
characterized by strong environmental variability, the means of
operation used are models of mammoth dimensions and the unit of
measurement is the ton. Accidents are the order of the day, they do not
make the news unless they are particularly serious. Every "mistake" is
paid for and dearly; for this reason, faced with the poisonous
statements made last year by a well-known Apuan entrepreneur to the
journalists of Report, the quarrymen went into a rage, only to then
forget after a week and return to everyday life, with the acceptance and
resignation to the idea that in the quarry the accident is part of the
work itself. There are so many and so frequent accidents that have
occurred, sometimes even fatal, that one gets used to it, I don't know
why, it is certainly unacceptable, but that's how it is.

The Lega dei Cavatori, an association founded after the Gioia landslide
in 2016, which buried two quarrymen and seriously injured a third, was
born to claim the right to return home alive and well, trying to put
safety first rather than production and profit. Unfortunately, a few
days ago, on the eve of May 1st, a colleague died in a quarry accident,
another who leaves behind a wife and daughter, a couple of years and he
would have retired. Paolo Lambruschi was his name, a cooperative worker
in the Canal Grande cooperative, one of the three large quarrymen's
cooperatives in Carrara. The quarrymen's cooperatives were born in the
post-war period as labor providers for Montecatini, a mining company
that held the concessions for approximately 65% of the Carrara quarries.
At the end of the 90s, following the bankruptcy of Montecatini, Sam
Imeg, who in the meantime had acquired the Montecatini concessions,
participated in the direct acquisition of some concessions. Sam Imeg
also went bankrupt, some concessions were taken over by quarrymen's
cooperatives. Quarrymen entrepreneurs therefore, in a highly competitive
and unscrupulous market logic, who jostle to stay afloat surrounded by
the sharks of local entrepreneurship in the sector. In a socioeconomic
context driven by capital, struggles and claims are welcome and useful,
but if the direction is not aimed at changing the prevailing model, that
is, the capitalist one, this slaughter will hardly end. We no longer
want to be veterans of this war.

Manu

https://umanitanova.org/di-cava-si-continua-a-morire-reduci-della-guerra-del-capitale/
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