Labourers in the Gioia Tauro Plain, March 2021. Photo by Valerio Muscella

Rome, June 17, 2021 – For the eighth consecutive year, Medici per i Diritti Umani (MEDU) operated in the Plain of Gioia Tauro, Calabria, during the citrus harvest season with the aim of promoting the protection of the health and fundamental rights of the approximately 2,000 foreign labourers employed in agriculture under conditions of severe exploitation. A multidisciplinary team reached several official and informal settlements by means of a mobile clinic, in particular: the Nuova Tendopoli in San Ferdinando, the abandoned farmhouses in the countryside of Rizziconi and Taurianova, and the container camp in Contrada Testa dell’Acqua in the municipality of Rosarno. In addition to providing primary medical assistance and socio-healthcare guidance, the team carried out a constant activity of legal counseling and supported local health institutions in screening activities for the prevention and containment of Covid-19. The report “Red zones, black labour” includes contributions from journalist Sara Manisera and researcher Sabrina Garofalo, who respectively analyse the systemic nature of labour exploitation in agriculture and the relationship between bodies, territory and health.

Eight years after the start of MEDU’s activities in the Plain, the picture is still bleak: tent camps turning into shanty towns, heaps of rubbish in informal settlements as well as in city centers areas, non-existent transport, collapsing health services, powerless and often commissioned institutions, widespread black and grey labour, and an agricultural sector in crisis. Access to healthcare is hampered by bureaucratic obstacles, lack of information, and the isolation of places to live and work. Many workers are still unable to exercise basic rights such as registering with the civil register, renewing residence permits, accessing agricultural unemployment or sick pay, because of the contractual, wage and contribution irregularities that systematically characterise employment relationships.

The second wave of Covid-19 hit the Rosarno container camp and the New Tendopoli in San Ferdinando, leading to the establishment of two red zones, but the epidemiological surveillance initiatives to contain the virus implemented by the local health authorities proved inconsistent and ineffective. In addition to the health emergency, several road accidents involved labourers while cycling to or from work, one of which caused the death of a young man, Gassama Gora, who was hit by a car on 21 December 2020 and left without help.

The 324 people who turned to MEDU for medical assistance or socio-legal support were young men, 94% of whom were legal residents in Italy with an average age of 32 years and were mostly from western sub-Saharan African countries. Only 13% of the patients visited were registered in the National Health Service (SSN) and in most cases the pathologies detected were due to the precarious living and working conditions of the labourers. In relation to working conditions, only 56% of the visited workers had a contract and among them only 52% received a pay slip. In all cases, no more than 10 working days in a month were registered, despite the fact that the majority of the labourers worked between 5 and 7 days a week in the high season, on average 8 hours a day, with an average remuneration of 35 euros per day, or, in the case of piecework, 1.20 – 1.50 euros per box (25 kg).

The enactment of important legislative measures such as Law no. 199 of 2016 to combat gangmaster system, recent institutional initiatives, in particular the establishment of the Tavolo caporalato (Interministerial Table for planning the Three-Years Plan to combat labor exploitation in agriculture and illegal hiring), the approval, in 2020, of a three-year plan to combat corporalism and labour exploitation in agriculture, and the intensification of controls on farms, have not so far had a significant impact on the phenomena of exploitation and have not in any way affected the functioning mechanisms of the production chain, which is the main cause. In the light of the framework described, MEDU addresses the Government, the Calabria Region and other institutions, asking once again for systemic measures, both in the immediate and in the long term.

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