“Vouchers increase instability and favor unannounced action”: on the day of the announcement of the general strike in Lombardy against the Meloni maneuver, the attack on return vouchers bears the signature of 4194 members of the Filcams CGIL of Mantua gathered for its XI Congress which has elected by a large majority the new General Secretary David Gabrielli, who has already held the position of regional secretary for eight years for the union representing workers in tourism, trade and services. The reintroduction of so-called “work vouchers” for sectors such as hotels, restaurants and personal care, discontinued collective agreements, involuntary part-time work and bad work: these are just some of the issues that the category will be called upon to face in the near future as confirmed yesterday by Gabrielli himself with the National Secretary Alessio Di Labio, the Regional Secretary Antonella Protopaba, the outgoing Secretary General Roberta Franzini, who moved to the CNT Secretariat in Via Altobelli and the Secretary General of Mantua CGIL Daniele Soffiati. “Over the next four years – declared Gabrieli – we will have to move forward with the renewal of important national collective agreements including the three trade and tourism agreements whose tables have already been opened. The political and economic situation is not conducive to us at the moment but we have to rely on our delegates and our members to restore Work to the center of our country’s politics.”
Starting to fight fragility. «For years, we have been asking tourism to get out of fragility and improvise with structural policies for stability and quality of work: the return of vouchers means going in the exact opposite direction, increasing fragility, hiding illegal work and not offering the future of people who work in a sector that represents an important part of GDP »he said. De Labeo. “This maneuver – added Franzini – is of great concern to us: the reintroduction of vouchers and the exclusion of the use of points of sale up to 60 euros will certainly lead to problems for our sectors: the first would reduce already very low wages and the second could really increase tax evasion. In short, “the reintroduction of vouchers – as noted by Protopaba – it will be devastating for our sectors because it means giving the employer the possibility of hiring workers without contributions and labor protection. And it will create more bad work, a scourge our sector is already being particularly affected by involuntary part-time jobs which mean poor wages today and poor pensions tomorrow. We need to find a way to counter this type of contract as well, by renewing national collective agreements with an increase in the basic salary and creating a less flexible and more protective work organization.” Di Lapio also concluded, “Many aids have come to businesses, and now workers need to keep up with inflation.”