Arrivederci a Taranto

Work-Environment in collaboration with INAIL – Istituto Nazionale per l’Assicurazione contro gli Infortuni sul Lavoro, Direzione Regionale Piemonte

The topic of workplace safety and workplace deaths is receiving renewed attention from civil society following the spate of fatal accidents that have recently shaken public opinion. In Italy, approximately 1,200 workers die every year, and at least 50,000 are left disabled. Despite the consolidated trend toward reducing accidents and occupational diseases, the world of work in our country is characterized by a complexity linked to precarious employment, flexibility, multi-ethnicity, the production crisis, and so on. These factors appear to make workplaces less safe. Paradoxically, in an era where advanced technology, on the one hand, is a dedicated body of legislation, on the other, should guarantee higher safety standards. In this context, the awareness has grown that prevention and protection measures must be accompanied by actions to promote a culture of safety. These actions, using a wide range of communication channels, are aimed not only at employers and workers, but at society as a whole. INAIL, the Italian National Institute for Workers' Compensation (INAIL), an institution responsible for protecting workers from injuries resulting from workplace accidents and occupational diseases and for reintegrating injured workers into the workforce, has long been committed to this issue. Cinema, using immediate and direct language, has a powerful engaging effect and is a powerful tool for reporting and raising awareness. Thanks to the evocative power of its images and the resulting emotional appeal, it is one of the most effective communication tools for generating public opinion and preventing silence surrounding numerous workplace accidents. Aiming to promote greater awareness of workplace safety and health, the 2008 edition of the CinemAmbiente Festival, in collaboration with INAIL Piedmont, inaugurates the new Work-Environment section. This section aims to provide a moment of reflection on workplace issues, the phenomenon of workplace deaths, and the strong links, in Italy and abroad, with issues of rights and the environment. INAIL data indicates that precarious workers and foreigners are among the most at-risk groups. Immigrants are doubly victims of unsafe workplaces: forced into horrendous conditions, including unhygienic ones, and subjected to grueling shifts, as illustrated in Alessandro Nucci's short film “Una stagione all’inferno” and Elina Hirvonen's documentary “Paradise: Three Journeys into this World”. They are unable to report accidents for fear of losing their jobs or being forced to leave Italy if they lack a residence permit. However, the phenomenon of accidental deaths also affects regular workers on construction sites and in factories, as evidenced by the ThyssenKrupp tragedy, which claimed the lives of seven workers and is explored in the documentary “ThyssenKrupp Blues” by Monica Repetto and Pietro Balla. It appears that on the night of the tragedy, the fire extinguishers were out of power and the emergency telephone was out of order: "A scandal of democracy," Ezio Mauro, editor of "Repubblica" newspaper, called it in an interview, and continued: "This tragedy is not just a news story, but something more. It is a snapshot of our country at this moment." Despite the tragedy in Turin; the one that occurred a few months earlier inside the Cordero di Fossano industrial mill, in which five workers were killed in an explosion; and all the others, documented in Daniele Segre's documentary “Morire di Lavoro”, which have shaken public opinion and led to great promises regarding safety, the situation does not seem to have improved at all. Shortly thereafter, five more workers lost their lives in an accident in Molfetta while cleaning a sulfur tanker, and a few months later, six workers died of poisoning inside a tanker in Mineo, near Catania. In Italy, the average workplace death rate is three a day. Further evidence of Italy's dramatic situation is Roberto Paolini's feature film “Arrivederci a Taranto”, which addresses the problems associated with the city's industrial area, once again touching on the issues of accidental deaths, mobbing, and pollution caused by dioxin and fine particulate matter. Closely linked to the reality of factories is the phenomenon of divestment, as depicted in the German documentary “Losers and Winners”. Set in the Ruhr, once the beating heart of the German steel industry, the film follows the dismantling of a factory sold to the Chinese, a subject also explored by Ermanno Rea in "La dismissione" and related to the liquidation of the large Bagnoli steel plant, "a dismantling that was both an exhausting and brutal farewell to the past." In Italy, the phenomenon of divestment Dismissals are becoming increasingly frequent (remember, ThyssenKrupp was being dismantled when the accident occurred): wages are lowered, layoffs are isolated but continuous, workers' rights are suspended or limited, undignified working conditions are created, production is reduced, raw material replacements are reduced, and finally, patents are sold off, machinery and "walls" are sold off, and the factory is rebuilt in a more capitalistically advantageous country like China. China's products, manufactured at extremely low cost and with insane exploitation of workers, are sold to entrepreneurs around the world through distribution in markets as large as entire cities, as the documentary by Du Haibin “San/Umbrella” teaches us. The same products will then be resold in Europe at a price 5 to 30 times higher than the local purchase price, often even with the "made in Italy" tag. Production, increasingly subcontracted to developing countries, is leading to the emergence of free-trade zones, a kind of "beehive factories" where workers work fourteen to eighteen hours a day. The rest of the time is spent in crowded dormitories where they eat and sleep. There are no health or safety regulations, much less union rights, and wages are approximately one dollar a day. According to Chan Ka Wai, director of the Hong Kong Christian Industrial Committee (HKCIC), "Fatigue, due to long working hours, is the number one cause of accidents, and wages and housing conditions show no improvement." Furthermore, to work faster, workers do not use protective equipment such as gloves or masks while handling harmful materials. Chan Ka Wai's words, referring to China, reflect the reality in many developing countries, where poor people, including children, continue to die to enrich the upper classes and richer countries.