The common perception of a simpler (or superficially better) past is often based on idealized, romanticized, and collective myths. However, the evolution of the world of work has also brought with it an increase in the forms of exploitation which, paradoxically, are presented as acceptable or even privileged conditions.
Charlotte Matteini, journalist and narrator of stories of seasonal young people, has brought to light a reality often hidden in a long article for TODAY: how many workers are induced to consider their exploitation as an opportunity or a privilege, thanks to rigged contracts and conditions that border on legality, but which are morally questionable. His investigation invites us to reflect on a worrying tendency, in which the dignity of work is sacrificed on the altar of an apparent flexibility and convenience, and pushes us to ask ourselves: how is it possible to consider exploitation a privilege?
The story of Gilberto Contadin and beyond: Charlotte Matteini’s investigation
Gilberto Contadin, a young man of only 20 years old, decided to leave for Rimini with the hope of living a work and growth experience. However, as soon as he arrived, he found himself having to face life and work conditions that have revealed a reality very different from that promise.
In a video released on Tiktok, Gilberto denounced that he had been placed in unhealthy accommodation, with mold and disorder, and to receive a salary of about 650 euros per month, from which more than 700 euros for food and accommodation were reduced. His story is not isolated: other young people, such as Alfredo and a girl who preferred to remain anonymous, shared similar experiences of exploitation and working conditions that are anything but respectful.
Charlotte Matteini has discovered that many of these seasonal are taken through agencies that apply not very transparent and often disadvantageous collective contracts, with clauses that allow you to climb large sums from wages without guarantees of real protection. Although they are formally legal, these contracts prove to be exploited tools masked by normal agreements, fueling a system in which the privilege turns into oppression.
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No, exploitation is not a privilege (for those who suffer it)
The question that arises spontaneously, in light of these testimonies, is: when exploitation becomes a privilege for those who suffer it? Never. But it can become so for those who put it in place. The answer, in fact, lies in the ways in which work relationships are structured in the tourism sector and seasonal animation. Charlotte Matteini underlines that many of the practices adopted are technically legitimate, thanks to collective agreements often signed by minority and not very representative unions, which favor the needs of companies at the expense of workers.
These contracts, often called “CCNL of the sector”, provide clauses that lighten the responsibilities of the employer, reduce workers’ rights and allow to climb large sums from wages, leaving the latter a clear compensation from misery. In addition, the management of rest time and the possibility of working even on official days of rest are often far less protected than you think.
Charlotte Matteini highlights how this form of exploitation, albeit legal, contributes to normalizing precarious and degrading living conditions. It is now evident that the system, fueled by opaque contracts and elastic rules, has meant that being exploited becomes, for many, a condition accepted as normal, almost a privilege hidden behind a mask of legality.
But are we sure that “in my time” was better?
“In my time it was better», They say,”In my time the value of the sacrifice was known“,”It was not escaped from the difficulties“,”We were not cowardly». This is how he talks about young people who were young when sacrificing themselves were still considered a quality to defend, giving up their dignity was a merit to their value and suffering was a necessary condition to enjoy what was obtained with one’s work (which – let’s remember – is a right, not a concession).
And so, when today’s young people began to question this stale, dusty, but above all wrong and inhuman vision of work, here they have started to put themselves on the defensive and to defend, above all, those who consider values and merits, but who are actually far from. They are the retailers of a retrograde culture, for which the slave is convinced by the master to be a slave twice: not only of the work (underpaid) that he does, but also of the ideals he is called to defend. The slave claims that work ennobles that sacrifice is one Condio sine qua nonthat even resisting the most inhuman conditions is an act that gives moral and social thickness to the worker. What if we started giving things their name? If the sacrifice stops being a quality, the renunciation stops being a merit and the suffering was no longer the price to pay to be considered valid and worthy of a dignified pay?
The truth is that, to the old guard, it is very afraid of admitting that she has made a mistake for a whole life: the anger towards any young man speaks of exploitation and inadequate working conditions is proof of this. The old guard does not listen to, but judges and condemns anyone who does not make the mistakes they made: normalize working conditions from slavery. So what does it do? Romanticizes exploitation, which incomprehensibly becomes an experience of growth, the abuse of the fort towards the weak, which becomes a tool to timey the characters, the hunger salaries, because the compensation must not be the ultimate goal, it must be – if anything – the productivity and the ability to work even in difficulties.
In short, the old guard wants the new one to stand what he has endured, so he tells the exploitation he suffered as if it were a privilege. An example is the story of Gilberto Condadin, the twenty -year -old who told his experience in a hotel in Rimini, where he would have to work as an animator: hunger salary and accommodation in bad condition. But he, for part of public opinion, is one of the many young people who have no spirit of adaptation or desire to make sacrifices, where to “make sacrifices” we intend to submit, cancel, approve, deprive yourself of something, sometimes even of one’s own dignity. And all this in the name of the increasingly abused “It has always been done like this», As if something perpetrated over the years it is automatically just and cannot be changed or improved. The culture of work, seen as a sacrifice, renounces the care of time, a necessary condition for enjoyment, is what our culture has ever produced.
I don’t know where the new generation will bring us, but I know where the old man led us: to idealize the exploitation, until it becomes victims. To speak as those who exploit, while remaining exploited. To warn those who try to say that another world is possible.
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