Rome, entertainment workers occupy theater. Franceschini meets them: they are with you

A group of entertainment workers since yesterday morning in Rome has been occupying the Globe Theatre in Villa Borghese, named after Gigi Proietti last November: a protest action against the indiscriminate closures that have been affecting the world of culture, but not only, for almost seven months now. In fact, the workers, who belong to the group Autorganizzat_ Spettacolo Roma, are demanding a structural reform of the sector, an interministerial table to open a real dialogue, measures against the shattering of contracts, a universal income, paid and permanent training, the redistribution of public funds, investments on culture and security, and public spaces for independent artistic and cultural production. “After more than a year since the blockade of live performances,” the occupiers write in a statement, “we demand a structural reform of the sector. We don’t want a reopening without security, plunging us back into an even more uncertain and unsafe world of work.”

The workers let it be known that they did not occupy to demand the reopening of the theaters: “too many small and medium-sized spaces,” they explain, “would not be able to reopen under these conditions,” and too many workers “would continue to stay at home without income. Last summer’s false restart showed us that.” The occupation will continue with thematic tables, assemblies, debates, and moments of in-depth and self-education in which it will be possible to participate both in person and online on the group’s Facebook page. The reform of the sector, the workers demand, will have to pass through “a continuity of income and a fair redistribution of resources for all the precarious, intermittent, self-employed and black workers in our sector and all others.”

From the Globe Theatre also come some concrete proposals for the immediate future: revision of the collective bargaining agreements to overcome contractual disparities and the bureaucratic confusion that governs labor relations in the sector, a legal recognition of the categories of cultural workers and their differentiated activities, the inclusion of some categories in the list of exhausting jobs, the revision of the social security system, and the internalization of temporary workers of large entities, foundations, theaters, and museums. “It is no longer tolerable,” the workers write in a note, “that there are contractual, remunerative and tutelary disparities in the same workplace, often also caused by the presence of different employer parties: that is why it is essential to prohibit or minimize the practice of contracting and subcontracting.”

The meeting with Culture Minister Dario Franceschini

The workers were met in the afternoon by the minister of culture, Dario Franceschini, who made a surprise visit to the Globe Theatre and attended the occupiers’assembly inside the theater for about an hour. “I appreciated the constructive, positive even protesting tone that accompanied this action,” the minister said. “I would first of all like to say that I am not the counterpart, I have a duty to be your representative in the institutions. I have a duty to represent your world, and I have tried to do so since the beginning of the pandemic, when this blizzard came, which swept the whole country.”

“The pandemic hit the world of culture in particular, leading to the closure of all but a few months in the summer,” Franceschini continued. “It was a painful consequence for the country as well as for those who work in the sector: the workers, the artists, those who keep the theater, the live show alive. We tried to intervene with all the instruments of urgency that were in part cumulative to the general ones provided for companies and workers, and for the first time in a sector that had no form of social protection, social shock absorbers arrived and those interventions, 600 thousand euros, for the fund for precarious, non-guaranteed and intermittent workers. In the course of this work we had the opportunity to survey a world whose numbers were unknown. There had been talk for a long time about the need to regularize workers in the sector, to get them out of a relationship with few social protections, and this made it possible, thus, to have an accurate map of intermittent workers. There is a delegated law that allows us to go with an accelerated legislative instrument to pass a regulation that makes permanent some of the protections that we introduced in the emergency phase. We are also addressing, in these hours, the problem of those who have had the emergency contributions but have not been able to pay the relative share to cover their pension path for 2020/2021, and we are trying to figure out how to avoid there being ’pension gaps’ for the latter.”

The minister went on to confirm a meeting with industry representatives for April 22, together with Labor Minister Andrea Orlando. “It is a big operation that we are doing with the Ministry of Labor and we want to do it by listening to the trade associations and all those that are dealing with it and that have arisen in this year and a half of emergency in a spontaneous and very lively way. The Parliamentary Commission has finished a fact-finding investigation and will release it next week and it will give a clearer picture in which we can intervene to give not only a guarantee of the exit from the emergency but also new prospects for the workers in the sector who for too many decades have not had them.”

Pictured: the occupied Globe Theatre

Rome, entertainment workers occupy theater. Franceschini meets them: they are with you

Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.