We denounce the discriminatory solution by which the administration of the Calabria region seems to want to end the long-standing issue of “public administration trainees”, a matter we have long followed closely[1] supporting the struggles of workers in the sector.
This is a story of state exploitation that began in 2010 when internships were established in Calabria for recipients of special benefits due to private sector job cuts. These internships have been carried out in the courts, schools, cultural heritage sites and municipalities by workers who, despite being de facto employees, have never enjoyed an employment contract and therefore vacation time, paid sick leave, retirement contributions and equal rights compared to their colleagues. The plight of PA trainees represents one of the most blatant forms of corporatization within the public sector, which now operates with contrivances and modus operandi similar to those of private companies, in part due to constraints on hiring capacity and the depletion of resources that local governments have suffered over the years.
The precariousness of trainees, who year after year have been forced to hope for the renewal of their positions, has become in Calabria one of the typical methods through which local politics and the management corporatism of administrations have made workers vulnerable to blackmail and clientelistic approaches. The commodification of these individuals by municipalities, public agencies and the region, the use of thousands of workers to artificially lower the cost of labor, could even be described as a kind of “administrative gangmaster system”, which allows local politics to use promises of contract renewals each year for electoral purposes.
After years of struggles, some of them bitter, carried out by trainees with rallies and through strikes, including together with some grassroots unions such as USB, an amendment to the 2025 budget law expands the possible destinations for reemployment of trainees: not only local authorities but all public administrations, which will now be able to proceed with the permanent hiring of trainees who fall under social inclusion programs aimed at the unemployed already receiving the special benefits. These workers will no longer have to make do with the approximately 700 euros received each month in the form of INPS benefits but will finally be able to obtain an employment contract.
This will not be the case, however, for those who make up more than a third of the pool of these workers: trainees over the age of 60. For them, early retirement is planned through the provision of a subsidy even lower than what they currently receive as trainees, in an attempt to “flush out” as many as possible from the pool of those entitled to stabilization. This solution has been devised through a framework agreement between the regional administration and the confederal trade unions, which are complicit in this discriminatory policy. The plan involves 25 million euros, which the region would allocate for the social inclusion allowance to support these workers until they reach retirement age.
This is a humiliation for these workers, many of whom are part of single-income families, both economically and morally: after 15 years of being without a job contract and after having been exploited as a low-cost labor force to effectively replace the absence of regularly paid clerks or workers, the “elderly” trainees, now considered of little use, are discarded and forced to live on a 600 euro subsidy, just above the poverty line in Calabria. This will be a temporary window before they likely receive a social pension (even less money), given that these individuals have been deprived of any kind of retirement contributions for many years. This policy especially harms women trainees, who are doubly penalized in a context where it is objectively impossible for them to find alternative employment at that age.
After fighting for years and, in many cases, leading the struggle of their younger colleagues, trainees over the age of 60 are now being told that they no longer have the right to work, that they are not entitled to contracts for which they have fought so hard, that they are less valuable than the PA employees with whom they have shared duties for years. This is happening precisely at a time in history when, paradoxically, attempts are being made to legitimize further increases in the retirement age.
Against an agreement that seeks out to create discrimination among workers, against a decision that aims to break the unity of the trainees’ struggle, against a policy that seeks to normalize poverty for those considered “less competitive”, we reaffirm the right to stable and decent work for all and the need for the common and undivided struggle of wage workers, from every sector and geographical area.
Calabria Federation Executive Secretariat – Communist Front
[1] https://www.lordinenuovo.it/2020/10/06/lamezia-terme-tirocinanti-pa-bloccano-superstrada/
