Corporalism: controls to be improved, inadequate or partially applied laws

"We have an important presence in the Latina area, at this time of summer in particular. Also because we are participating in a European plan on the emersion of undeclared work that leads us to carry out 20% more inspections than last year and to focus only on the fight against undeclared work,' Paolo Pennesi, director of the National Labour Inspectorate, told Adnkronos. He added: 'The dwarfism of our companies, as it is often defined, does not help because these phenomena of undeclared work are more typical of small, unstructured companies. Large companies do not give rise to problems of this kind, there are others but not these'.

The special attention paid by the inspectors to the province of Latina was not enough to identify a situation of irregularity before the fatal accident. With respect to which Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni expressed her hope that 'this barbarity will be severely punished', while the Ministers of Labour, Marina Calderone, and Agriculture, Francesco Lollobrigida, emphasised the government's commitment on this front and announced a meeting to be held on Friday 21 June with the participation of trade unions, employers' associations and relevant public bodies.

At present, the INL has about 2,300 ordinary inspectors, 860 technical inspectors and 520 Carabinieri of the Labour Inspection Unit. A further 750 technical inspectors are expected to be added shortly and in 2024 a total of 101,000 inspections should be carried out by the INL, of which more than 36,000 will focus on undeclared work, and another 17,000 by the Carabinieri. But compared to the number of active employers in Italy, in some areas there is the probability of being inspected once every ten years or more. Moreover, on the increase in controls, three months ago the Fp-Cgil stated in a communiqué, among other things, that 'we cannot go back to being slaves to the logic of numbers if this does not guarantee effective protection of workers'.

There are a number of factors, observes Marco Omizzolo, Eurispes sociologist and professor of Sociopolitology of migrations at the Sapienza University: 'Good rules that we have, such as Law 199 of 2016 on 'caporalato', are not fully applied and there are laws, such as the Bossi-Fini, that codetermine what happened in the province of Latina. In addition, not enough checks are carried out, which are not technologically advanced and should be continuous and inspired by a punctual and precise knowledge of how the phenomenon is organised territorially, knowledge that is achieved with continuous training courses'.