Death at work due to heat, 10 years ago the Paola Clemente case

There are A and B occupational deaths. To this second category belongs the death, exactly 10 years ago, of Paola Clemente, a 49-year-old woman who died during a day's work in a vineyard in Andria, Puglia, on 13 July 2015. Here Paola was working as a seasonal worker in the milling process, the stage of processing table grapes in which the bunches of grapes are stripped of the smallest berries. A job that Paola, like her other colleagues, carries out under prohibitive conditions. Under a tent in prohibitive temperatures. And so that day she falls ill. But help is slow to arrive and by the time the ambulance finally arrives it is too late.

A second-class occupational death, it was said. But perhaps not even that because officially Inail never recognised it as such. In addition to the damage, there is also the mockery for the family and her husband, who have been demanding justice for 10 years for that death. To no avail. Because the court proceedings are still in progress but leave little hope. On the criminal front, the owner of the vineyard, Luigi Terrone, was acquitted in the first instance of the charge of manslaughter. On the second strand, which concerns charges of forced labour also against six people from the temporary agency that found the work in Paola, hangs the sword of Damocles of the statute of limitations.

Paola Clemente's death was in any case not totally without consequences. Because, precisely on the emotional wave of the affair, a year after her death, law 199 on 'caporalato' was passed. And 'Paola's law' is also the title of the podcast signed by Francesca Zanni and Enrico Bergianti for Radio 24 that recounts the event 10 years after the events. 'What absolutely outraged me most about this affair,' Zanni says, 'was the general indifference underlying this exploitative system. Paola Clemente went to work that day even though she didn't feel well because she feared that if she went on sick leave she would lose her job...'.

The exploitation of labourers and the cancer of 'caporalato' in the agro-food chain is a drama that is instinctively associated with the lowest rung of the labour market: immigrants, especially irregular ones, with no documents and no rights and therefore more easily exploited. The case of Paola Clemente, a 49-year-old Italian woman, dispels this common belief. 'The truth is that anyone can find themselves, from one day to the next, in economic difficulty and end up in a similar situation. And this is perhaps the common thread that links 'Paola's Law' to the other podcasts we have produced over the years'.

Francesca Zanni and Enrico Bergianti became known to the podcast audience thanks to 'Rumore', a series dedicated to the disappearance of Federico Aldrovandi, released in 2022 and winner of the 'Il Pod' award in the Indie category. For Radio 24 they produced "Il caso Amedeo Damiano" in 2023 and, in 2024, "Come una marea", winner of the "Il Pod" award, Diversity category. For Bompiani Francesca Zanni wrote "Irrisolti, ten Italian crimes. Victims without justice'. A.F.D.