Domenico Guglielmo, Caterina Cazzato, Antonia Calarco and Maria Carmen Gatti leave the headquarters of the territorial labor inspectorate in via Silvestro Sanvito to join the workers’ protest organized by Cgil and Uil. Their gesture is important not only because they are union delegates, health and safety representatives, and union representatives of the Varese inspectorate, but because first and foremost they are workers expressing solidarity with other workers, as they are called to combat a phenomenon that in Italy now has the numbers of a war.
According to Inail data, the reported workplace accidents in 2023 were 585,356, of which 109,849 in Lombardy and 9,265 in the Varese area. Last year, there were 1,041 deaths in the workplace in Italy, of which 172 were in Lombardy and 13 in the province of Varese. The sectors most exposed to workplace accidents are construction, manufacturing activities, and transportation. Numbers that are nothing short of frightening.
A WAR LOST FROM THE START
If it is true that rules walk on people’s legs, those to be applied in terms of safety and health in the workplace, given the low presence of inspectors, make very little progress. “We are ready to do our part – explains Domenico Guglielmo, labor inspector and Fp Cgil delegate at the Varese labor inspectorate – but we are experiencing a difficult situation. Despite carrying out hundreds of inspections a year, we face considerable pressure due to a severe staff shortage, so much so that Varese now represents a national case. With the hiring freeze first, the pension freeze later, combined with the poor results of recruitment through competitions, we are now reduced to a minimum number of inspectors.”
THE LABOR INSPECTORATE CANNOT GUARANTEE A SERVICE
The data is ruthless: the staff shortage at the Labor Inspectorate of the province of Varese reaches almost 70% as a total workforce. If we then look at the technical staff, i.e. those who actually carry out inspections on construction sites and in companies, the overall shortage exceeds 80%. “With these numbers in a territory that has 58,000 active companies and 380,000 employed workers – continues Guglielmo – we cannot guarantee an effective and quality service to the best of our ability.”
ONLY THREE INSPECTORS DEDICATED TO SAFETY
Another aspect highlighted by the workers of the Labor Inspectorate is that many inspectors, instead of being in the field for checks in companies, are used to handle bureaucratic practices. Caterina Cazzato has been working at the Varese Inspectorate for 25 years, a significant amount of time during which the lack of sufficient staff to ensure a service worthy of the name has taken on the characteristics of chronicity. “Currently – emphasized the Uilpa delegate at the Labor Inspectorate – the inspectors dedicated to safety are only three and are newly appointed. They are accompanied by five carabinieri from the unit who also perform other types of assignments, while our inspectors are trained and dedicated only to this type of activity. I have been working in Varese for 25 years and when I arrived there was only one dedicated inspector who mainly dealt with elevators and lifts. For about ten years, there was only one person. Therefore, if it is important to reiterate that the Labor Inspectorate represents the first line of defense for the life of the worker, it is equally important to say that we are fighting a war without weapons.”
The union: “Those in Florence are workplace homicides.” In Varese, the labor inspectorate lacks 70% of the staff.
