Naples May Day Rally: Mayor Manfredi Calls for Dignified Work Amidst Wage Stagnation
Naples, May 1st – A significant turnout marked the May Day procession in Naples, organized by the trade unions CGIL, CISL, and UIL. The event saw the participation of numerous institutional figures, including Naples Mayor Gaetano Manfredi, who addressed the crowd at Piazza Municipio.
Mayor Manfredi underscored the profound significance of labor, stating, “Work represents dignity, freedom, and the rights of individuals and families. We have come through truly difficult years. Recent data indicates that over the past five years, Italy has been the European country where wages have grown the least, and purchasing power has consequently diminished.” The Mayor also paid tribute to the “young victims who, unfortunately, due to a lack of training and inadequate company protections, lost their lives while striving to bring home a salary.”
Unions Demand End to Precarious Work and Wage Increases
Nicola Ricci, General Secretary of CGIL Naples and Campania, echoed these sentiments, asserting, “Work must not be precarious: we cannot be content with it becoming a mere political slogan from a government that focuses on bonuses and looks to businesses.” Ricci criticized the government’s May Day decree, which allocates 960 million euros for hiring bonuses, arguing that “it should be the other way around.” He expressed concern that “in this country, the right-wing government does not want to address the issue of precariousness.”
Ricci further highlighted the disparity in employment statistics: “Employment is growing from a statistical point of view, showing a positive sign, but the problem lies in the very quality of work. In the South, we have precarious, temporary, low-wage, and low-professional work.”
Melicia Comberiati, General Secretary of CISL Naples, reinforced this message: “From today’s square, a clear message must emerge: no more poor work, no more work without rights. We need to recenter the protagonism of stable, well-paid, contractualized work.” Comberiati stressed the urgency of a social alliance and a Pact for Naples and its metropolitan area, calling them “necessary tools to counteract a labor market that risks becoming rooted in precariousness, bogus contracts, exploitation, and new forms of slavery, also responsible for so many deaths at work.”
Nicola Sgambati, Secretary of UIL Campania, added that “dignified work means applying contracts that preserve and guarantee adequate wages and protections; dignified work means combating illegality in our territories, the spread of undeclared work; dignified work means combating precariousness and poor work, which particularly affects women and our young people who are forced to leave their country to achieve their potential.”
Sgambati concluded, “This is a day of celebration but above all of struggle to provide answers to the numerous disputes in our region and never to lower our guard on another hateful phenomenon, which is that of accidents and deaths at work, a scythe that must be stopped by establishing a special prosecutor and recognizing culpable homicide for tragedies that occur at work.”
Campania Region Pledges Enhanced Workplace Safety
Coinciding with May Day, the Campania Region reaffirmed its commitment to workplace safety. Governor Roberto Fico and Councillor Saggese stated, “The protection of health and safety in the workplace represents an absolute priority of the Campania Region’s government action. Every serious accident, every occupational disease, constitutes a defeat for the entire public system. Every death at work represents a deep wound for the entire regional community.”
To address this, the Campania Region intends to assume an even stronger and more coordinated role within the institutional system that oversees workplace safety, acting in prevention, surveillance, promotion of a safety culture, and strengthening workers’ health protection. The leadership of Palazzo Santa Lucia has instructed the Health Protection Directorate to initiate an extraordinary reinforcement of actions concerning health and safety in the workplace, to be implemented within regional competencies and in full compliance with state attributions.
The Directorate is mandated to issue, in coordination with the General Directors of the Local Health Authorities, an operational directive for intensifying controls on construction sites, with specific attention to building, logistics, transport, public and private contracts with high labor intensity, and subcontracting chains. Within fifteen days, the Regional Coordination Committee for prevention and surveillance activities in occupational health and safety must be convened for the adoption of an extraordinary regional program.
