Workers | Pummarolə

by David Broder Originally published in Catalyst Vol. 3 No. 4 Winter 2020 Across the West, the last four decades have been marked by the large-scale collapse of the labor movement. Not only have trade unions withered but so have, with few exceptions, the social-democratic and communist parties and their roots in working-class life. Neoliberalism has not only created new market structures, reduced welfare provision, and privatized industries, it has also pulverized the social basis of many old working-class institutions. Yet as crisis-struck neoliberalism continues to spark all manner of social revolt, many activists insist that the fall of the mass parties is not such a disaster. Their demise is either celebrated — a liberation from bureaucratic control, opening up space for mor...

Protest in memory of Mohamed Ben Ali in Naples. Photograph: Pasquale Senatore/Pacific Press/Rex/Shutterstock By Lorenzo Tondo and Marta Bellingreri This article was originally published by The Guardian on July 13, 2020. Earlier this summer, as millions of Italians were locked down inside their homes, fruit and vegetables were left to rot in the fields despite the cost to the country’s economy. Italy’s informal refugee and migrant workforce, who had previously worked long hours in wretched conditions for paltry wages to bring produce off the fields, were absent from the farms. ‘A beautiful thing’: the African migrants getting healthy food to Italians “Most of the migrants work without proper papers,’’ says Tonino Russo, regional secretary in Sicily of the Flai CGIL, It...

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The Autumn and Fall of Italian Workerism

Brutal Deaths of Exploited Migrants Shine a Spotlight on Italy’s Farms