Food and exploitation: the illegal hiring conquers the North with more sophisticated methods than what happens in the South

ROME – Spurious cooperatives, exhausting shifts, pirated contracts and gray work. These are the evolutions of exploitation in agriculture in Lombardy, which theEarth Association! investigated along the supply chains of melons, bagged salads and pork.

The corporal. The report tells the many faces of illegal hiring in Lombardy, considered as the agricultural and economic engine of Italy, and sheds light on the existing connections between the exploitation and the environmental impact of an agro-industrial system, which in some Lombard provinces has changed the terrains and landscapes. And that today, with the ongoing energy crisis, seems unsustainable. The results of the dossier are based on a field investigation carried out by a team of journalists and a photographer, in coordination with the staff of Earth!

The forms of the corporal. From spurious cooperatives to exhausting shifts through pirate contracts and gray labour, as a rule, the forms of exploitation identified in Lombardy are more sophisticated than those of Southern Italy or some EU states in the Mediterranean, where Terra! he investigated. The demonstrations of illegal hiring have evolved, because they now manage to get around the controls and even show a semblance of legality. The first chapter of the dossier, “The century of melons”, focuses on the functioning of spurious cooperatives in the production of melons in the Mantua area; the second, “The salad factory”, on the grueling shifts to which the workers employed in the fourth range industry, developed in the provinces of Bergamo and Brescia, are subjected; the third, “La terra dei suini”, on the jungle of contracts in the livestock sector, in particular in the slaughter of pigs in the provinces of Mantua and Cremona, where Earth! She managed to get into some farms.

The discriminatory story. For years, illegal hiring in Italy was described as a phenomenon that concerned only the southern regions, rooted in a “typically” southern mentality or way of doing business. But this Terra survey! it reveals another face of the North, where exploitation is not only possible but often the rule. “Spurious cooperatives, widely used in the production of melons, represent the new forms of exploitation, Multiservice contracts are the shortcut that many use in the pig sector, to finally arrive at exhausting work shifts, with industrial rhythms that force the workers to never stop”, explains Fabio Conte, President of theEarth Association!

The Lombard case. Lombardy, with an agro-industrial production worth over 14 billion euros, is the first Italian region in the agro-food sector. Here the narration of work in agriculture is often crushed by the story of the difficulty of finding available labour, especially the specialized one. A highly critical element, on which Terra! sheds light, telling the reality of agricultural recruitment, working conditions, the difficulties of doing agriculture today and the gaps created by the fragility of public services and filled by intermediaries.

The century of melons. Lombardy is the second producer of melons in Italy, after Sicily. In the province of Mantua alone, 90,000 tons of this fruit are grown, over a period of time that goes from May to October. Here the Moldovan and Eastern European workers, physically stronger but also more susceptible to blackmail, are replacing the Moroccan workers, now settled for twenty years. In these territories, intermediation is carried out by often fictitious cooperatives, also based in Emilia Romagna and Veneto. These either act independently of the company, paying starvation wages to the workers, or in connivance with it. Damage to a sector of excellence, protected by the Mantua PGI melon consortium. But the problem, like Earth! has denounced in the past, is often upstream. Almost all the producers interviewed denounce a market in which it is the large-scale distribution (GDO), the supermarkets where we usually shop, which impose low prices on producers and also indirectly suppress workers’ rights. In these conditions, making ends meet is not easy. Yet more and more there are those who choose to get out of the chains of large-scale distribution and to deliver to farmers’ markets, thus rediscovering small-scale agriculture once again. The example of some companies of the Mantua agritourism consortium “Verdi Terre d’acqua”, recounted in the report, goes in this direction.

The Salad Factory. In the provinces of Bergamo and Brescia, the progress of the production of bagged salads (or fourth range) is visible at a glance. Estimates indicate that 31 percent of the sector’s production is in Lombardy, while 30 percent is concentrated in the Piana del Sele, in Campania. Two complementary agricultural regions from the point of view of seasonality, despite the fact that with greenhouses it is actually possible to grow crops all year round. The entire production process of the fourth range is highly industrialized and dependent on the continuous requests of the customers, which are the supermarkets. And just like in an industry, if on the one hand there is a standardization of processes, on the other hand violations of working conditions emerge: exhausting shifts and a jungle of contracts. The workers are mostly Indian Sikhs, who live around the manufacturing centres. Many companies, especially in periods of maximum intensity, turn to cooperatives, employment agencies and limited liability companies, outsourcing entire production phases. With the energy crisis of 2022, the bagged salad industry showed the face of economic and environmental unsustainability. According to an interviewed producer, the increase in production costs, including iron, plastic, fertilizers, constant refrigeration of storage environments was plus 20 percent and someone is wondering about alternative models to put in place.

The land of pigs. Lombardy is home to 50 percent of the pigs present throughout the national territory: over 4 million crammed into 6,7471 farms. On average, 20 percent of the meat from a heavy pig carcass is destined for PDO hams, 60 percent for processing into cured meats and sausages, and only 20 percent for fresh meat. The peculiarity of pig processing in Italy is certainly its fragmentation, because we are talking about a sector divided into many small farms-breeders. This weakness spills over into the marketing phases, where large-scale retail trade always prevails. In such a fragmented supply chain, forced to keep production costs low, the outsourcing of work to cooperatives or supply agencies is the rule. In slaughterhouses, however, you often see company and cooperative workers carrying out the exact same tasks, even if they could not. The effects of the contractual under-classification of the workforce is a constant especially when it comes to migrant workers, because they are more subject to blackmail.

The contracts. In these cases, the most widespread contracts are the Multiservice or the Cleaning one, which are cheaper than the National Labor Contract of the agri-food industry. These violations are part of a sector that affects the Lombardy region from the point of view of emissions and therefore affects animal welfare.