The Harvest

The story exposed in the film is representative of a phenomenon led by Italian companies and large-scale retail that transcends exploitation in the workplace. As reported on numerous occasions, farm laborers are victims of intimidation and punitive forays by their employers every time they ask to be paid what is due to them by contract. It is thus easy to understand how mafia organizations manage to penetrate the system. With its dossier “Doparsi per lavorare come schiavi” (Taking Dope To Work Like Slaves), published in 2014, the In Migrazione cooperative exposed how some Indian farm laborers are even forced to take drugs such as opium, methamphetamines and antispasmodics to improve their performance during their long hours of work in hothouses.

“Many of us suffer from terrible pains in our backs, hands, necks and eyes because our faces are always covered with soil, sweat, chemicals and poison. But we’re forced to work. If I ask for a day off my boss replaces me with another worker. I’ve been living like this for seven years. Some Indians who work with me take dope once or twice a day so as not to feel pain without slowing down. This is their only way of getting the illegal recruiter to call them back to work again the day after.”

In autumn 2016 a law was passed in Italy against the phenomenon of the illegal recruitment of farm labor (Law no. 199/2016) but no real change has been recorded since then. Despite the arrest of illegal Indian recruiters and Italian employers, thousands of female and male laborers are still being exploited through legal loopholes such as contracts that are apparently regular but actually show the worker laborer as being employed for only four days a month as opposed to the 30 days really worked. The extra working hours are off-the-book, scribbled on scraps of paper with hourly rates very distant from the ones envisaged by the national labor agreement.