«The failure to sign the Area Pact of the Ionian area by Filcams Cgil and Uiltucs represents a clear response to a profoundly wrong method, which ends up mortifying the role of the world of work and of trade unions».
This was declared by Pietro Patti and Ivan Tripodi, general secretaries of CGIL and UIL Messina, Giselda Campolo, general secretary of Filcams CGIL Messina, and Francesco Rubino, regional secretary of Uiltucs Sicily – Messina office.
«Our organizations – they continue – have always pursued clear objectives: the deseasonalization of employment relationships, the application of collective agreements signed by the confederal trade union organizations to combat poor work, the elimination of contractual dumping and greater safety in the workplace.
Precisely because of the importance of these issues and the repercussions that they determine on the entire tourism system, we believe it is essential that they are addressed through a shared path between all the actors involved: trade union organizations, employers’ associations, local authorities and inspection bodies.
A true Area Pact must be real, concrete and enforceable, the result of a shared synthesis and built by recognizing equal dignity and full negotiating capacity to all the subjects involved.
Such an important issue for the world of work cannot be addressed by simply transmitting an already defined text, essentially subjected to signature according to a “take it or leave it” logic, without a prior and real possibility of comparison and without allowing potential signatories to make proposals, modifications and improvements.
The particular economic and social moment would have required, instead, the ability to transform even shareable principles into enforceable rights, clear rules, measurable objectives and verifiable commitments. This, unfortunately, did not happen.
For these reasons – add Patti, Tripodi, Campolo and Rubino – it appears even more difficult to understand the forward flight of those who have chosen to sign an agreement that was born without real sharing and which risks, precisely for this reason, being a incomplete and weak Area Pact”.
Cgil and Uil also underline how the approach of the agreement was not shared even by the hoteliers’ associations of Taormina and Giardini Naxos, which represent a fundamental part of the companies directly involved in employment in the sector.
«The Area Pact thus constituted, moreover with a text that dates back to 2024, does not present, in our opinion, elements that are truly improving for workers and contains numerous critical issues. Declarations of principle or good intentions are not enough if these are not accompanied by tools capable of producing concrete effects.
A significant example concerns the enormous increase in the cost of parking passes decided in Taormina. On this issue we have not received the necessary attention towards the workers who reach the city every day to carry out their work and who find themselves directly affected by the weight of these choices.
A true Area Pact should also deal with these concrete problems, intervening on the material conditions of those who work and contributing to making the local tourism system truly sustainable.
Likewise, deseasonalization cannot remain a simple statement of principle, but must be translated into measurable objectives: increase in days actually worked, growth in the average duration of contracts, increase in permanent transformations, reduction in involuntary part-time and increase in employment in the low season months.
These are the indicators through which it will be possible to verify whether deseasonalisation really produces more work, greater employment stability and better conditions for workers”.
«Cgil and Uil – conclude Pietro Patti, Ivan Tripodi, Giselda Campolo and Francesco Rubino – are available immediately to build a truly useful tool for Taormina and for the entire Ionian area, as long as it is a concrete, shared and demandable tool for the workers.
This perspective can only arise from a clear, true and respectful discussion of normal trade union dialectics, in which all subjects can fully carry out their negotiating role, without pre-established texts and without diktats or insolence. The territory does not need cosmetic agreements, but an Area Pact capable of producing good employment, stable work, decent wages, security and sustainable development”.
