On the immense antics of young people refusing to work at Expo: no more insults

We are used to it by now, dear young friend and dear young friend who happened upon the lines of this post: not a day goes by without there being someone whose original gimmick leaps to mind to make you out to be no-good, picky and slackers. To circulate this unhealthy belief many people have bothered. The newspapers took care of it. Ministers, senators, congressmen and politicians who have always been accustomed to living in bamboozlement and who, in all likelihood, do not even know where true toil dwells. There have tried rapacious businessmen who, from the heights of their not-always-clear positions and with not-always-transparent histories behind them, or meritless heirs to fortunes amassed by fathers and grandfathers, take the luxury of pointing you out as the worst of the scum of the new generations, according to them composed for the most part of irresponsible and spoiled youngsters. I am speaking in the second person for the convenience of addressing you more directly, but know that what you feel is what I feel as well, since, in all likelihood, we are contemporaries, or nearly so.

Now they have managed to come up with the immense antics of paid jobs with monthly pay of one thousand three hundred euros at theExpo in Milan. Jobs that you would have dared to refuse. To expose the despicable nonsense spread by certain press, and which seems almost designed to put the shortcomings of a long and cumbersome selection process on young people, some have already taken care of it(Il Secolo XIX, Next, Wired and many others), but the point lies elsewhere, and we’ll get to it right away. The point is that not only young people are insulted, mocked, offended. The point is that such operations carried out by the rottenest and filthiest part of the country, which we should be sincerely grateful if it has led us to where we now find ourselves, are in danger of creating a downward spiral whose end is hard to discern. Your right to get a decent paying job, enshrined moreover in our constitutional charter, which we rush to call “the most beautiful in the world” if it becomes the subject for television shows but which we soon forget about if it comes to honoring it, is now branded as a demand: they tell you that you have to work your way up, they tell you that work has to be earned, they tell you that before making demands you have to prove yourself. Which, mind you, is not wrong at all: it is right and healthy to prove what a person is worth, before they make demands. What is wrong is that the demonstrations have to manifest themselves through endless poorly paid internships, through volunteering disguised as work, through capestro contracts, through forms of work that offer you no guarantees about your future and that do not allow you to make plans. Yet making plans is your right, am I right?

It seems that instead making plans has become a luxury. Because if you turn down an internship at four hundred euros a month, with no prospect of employment, you are a demanding person, who must be made aware of the fact that other young people who have not had your opportunity would take it right away. If you turn down a fixed-term contract of 800 euros gross per month, perhaps a hundred kilometers from home, and most of the net you are left with turns into travel expenses, then it is because you demand to have the job on your doorstep. If they offer you overtime paid at eighty cents gross on top of an already paltry hourly wage, and force you to work ten-hour shifts a day perhaps by requiring you to be on call on holidays, then you are a person who does not know the spirit of sacrifice. In fact, you should even thank those who offer you such grace. Patience if you have studied, if you have obtained a degree, no matter in what field, perhaps with top marks and perfectly on course. Patience if you and your family have made sacrifices so that you could obtain a degree that would open the doors for you to learn to do the job you have always dreamed of, since dreaming is also your full right. Despite often having to contend with the dreariness of a reality for which you probably have very little fault, or none at all.

Photo by DGmag. com (Creative Commons license)

Those who criticize you and those who insult you, for their part, do not understand that this boorish and insulting moralism, which paints you as a spoiled slacker if, rightly, you oppose your dignity to the exploitation of your skills, not only has no reason to exist, but is as insulting as anything a young person can receive who asks for nothing more than the right to work under decent and decent conditions. To refuse odious working conditions for miserable wages is to claim one’s rights: pride should never retreat in the face of frustration. It is necessary to remember that you have gifts and qualifications, and it is necessary to remember that those gifts and qualifications cannot be sold out to allow someone else to prosper or get rich behind your back and by exploiting your labor. Rejecting unacceptable job offers is also a sign of civility: it means sending a clear signal so that supply can match demand. Conversely, accepting a job with exploitative conditions will contribute to leveling the supply further and further downward: have you ever tried to think that accepting to work for free or nearly free does great harm not only to you, but also to many others like you?

Dear young friend and dear young friend, you will allow me a small suggestion. The next time you receive criticism from an arrogant artless politician, or from a sleazy columnist of a newspaper lavishly foraged with public money, or from a pasty grad who got his clerical job perhaps through the favors of some well-connected friend, try to make sure that they understand that if they are going to make you out to be clueless or, worse, spoiled slackers, they have the wrong people, because work should be recognized in a dignified way, and that for their classist rants there are bars of the lowest order ready to willingly accommodate them. Most importantly, try asking them if they would exchange their position for yours. Or whether they would appreciate their children having to go through the insults, jeers, doors in their faces and offers of unsatisfactory and poorly paid jobs that you are receiving. I bet, however, that you would not get a response: because they would hardly admit that it could be anything but negative. Or, at best, they would hold the value of sacrifice against you. That is, what they have probably never known, and about which they almost always speak from hearsay.

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