Cultural heritage workers discriminated against with respect to volunteers, citizenship income earners and civil service operators. The reason? They cost too much
That you don’t eat with culture is one of those false clichés that have become real because of bad cultural sector management practicesIn fact, there would be work for all the numerous professionals of cultural heritage who are trained every year in Italian universities and academies. The problem is that work must (should) be paid and (regular) contracts cost money.
This is why cultural heritage professionals remain more and more unemployed, often precarious, sometimes forced to change jobs or do more than one to survive (you know another hilarious cliché that humanistic graduates want to fry chips in fast food restaurants?
But how can all this happen in the country that holds the greater number of sites included in the list of Unesco world heritage sites (i.e. 58)? Thanks to a long, meticulous and tireless work of weakening and devaluing the figure of the cultural heritage professional carried out by governments, ministries, institutions and organizations for about 30 years now.
This is how we arrived at 2020, an emergency year due to Covid, at the beginning of which (yes, it was only the beginning) 56% of workers of the sector declared to have suffered “the interruption of the working activity with consequent zeroing or collapse of revenue”, Which for nearly half of them meant a loss up to 100% of your income.
This data, along with many others, had been collected by You know me? I am a cultural heritage professional, a sector association that deals with the protection of workers and cultural heritage (you can read more by clicking here). This because only 12% of the interviewees declared an employment contract indefinitely, while the most were “assumed” with VAT, that is: it was subject to rules and duties from subordinate worker but without the relative protections.
Another 37% of workersinstead, he claimed to work with occasional services, contracts on call or without a contract (in black). In other words, most cultural heritage professionals, after investing money in education and training that enable them to understand and manage such a delicate and complex sector, find themselves working without contractual safeguards and with one inadequate salary to the path taken, to the qualifications achieved but also, often, to the cost of living.
Cultural heritage, the problem of outsourcing
L’outsourcing of services, for example, ensures that workers in a public museum can actually be hired by a cooperative that frames them as servants or vigilantes (the infamous multiservice contract), even if in fact they perform duties of responsibility or heterogeneous with respect to their role (such as cleaning and checking tickets together with the care and enhancement of assets).
Obviously, with wages reduced to the bone, necessary for the reference cooperative for cut costs and win the contract. We had already spoken here of workers paid € 4.80 per hour to welcome ministers to the G20 for culture, for example. The pulse of the situation can be given to you by the numerous indignant comments on a recent Facebook post, linked below, with which the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa he praised the professionalism of a young librarian who works there, for a cooperative, in fact. Users have asked several times why to enhance the precarious instead of doing everything to directly hire this worker: the Normal responded by limiting the comments to the post.
Volunteers in cultural heritage, citizenship income earners and prisoners
Alongside these figures, however, there are often others, put to perform the same tasks but without any qualifications. This is the case of volunteers, citizenship income earners and, recently, also prisoners.
On November 3 is the news of theagreement signed between Ministers Franceschini and Cartabia to do work prisoners in cultural sites: 52, to be precise, which will open the doors, for now, to 102 people accused of crimes for which a penalty of up to four years, engaged in public utility works for the purpose of testing. In the event of a positive outcome, the offense is extinguished. Commendable initiative that of putting inmates in contact with the artistic-cultural reality and giving them the opportunity to make themselves useful to the community, but why let them carry out jobs that require skills and professionalism for which there are qualified and trained figures?
Also from Franceschini, in mid-October, an endorsement to theuse of VAT numbers instead of employment contracts: the ministry of cultural heritagein fact, it closed on November 15th a call for vat registrars, doctorate or specialization school as a requirement, for 2000 euros gross per month (paid upon presentation of an invoice when the work is finished), 130 hours per month for a maximum of 24 months.
Certainly not a far-sighted policy in a country where the archives close due to absence or lack of staff. The last, among those that have caused the most stir, is the case ofState Archives of Genoa, for some time struggling with a chronic shortage of workers.
“Sorry to announce that today November 17, 2021 the study room of the State Archives of Genoa will remain closed to the public, because of lack of staff enough to guarantee its opening ”, is the notice that users found posted on the doors of the archive’s consultation room last month. Same fate that the month before had happened toState Archives of Camerino.
The figure of volunteer it is by now omnipresent, so much so that even large institutions have no qualms about recruiting them with public tenders instead of specialized personnel. Among the cases that had caused the most stir, we remember that of the municipality of Milan that, last March 10, while a glimpse of a restart after the long stop to culture imposed by Covid, had published a notice addressed to voluntary organizations and social promotion associations for “facilitating the use of the cultural heritage of some institutes of the Municipality of Milan”.
Specifically, the announcement read, “volunteers will be invited to facilitate the processes of knowledge of cultural sites communicating the main information to visitors to stimulate curiosity and improve the use of the heritage “. All specialized tasks that should be performed by qualified and competent personnel.
The ministerial table against the abuse of voluntary work in cultural sites
That voluntary work is abused in defiance of the law is also attested by the fact that the ministry itself has decided to open a discussion table on the subject, organized by the Directorate General for Museums, in the presence of trade union and category representatives. “All the participants agreed that volunteering helps and does not replace workers, but it is clear that systematic use of free labor has been made in the last thirty years disguised as a volunteer ”the activists of You know me? reporting the news.
“The the need for new hires urgently, considering that without a minimum and adequate level of staff it would not be possible to enter into new agreements with voluntary associations ”, they specify.
It is certainly a good starting point, but will it be enough? The same Italian capital of culture 2022, Procida, has opened the search for volunteers to carry out this “extraordinary project”. In short, the way to go towards the recognition of dignity and professionalism of workers in the cultural sector unfortunately it still seems long.
One idea might be, while working on a hiring plan for skilled unemployed and precarious workers, to teach that culture is not mere entertainment but strength and potential flywheel for the relaunch of the national economy. Enhancing the Italian heritage cannot ignore the enhancement of those who know how to take care of it in a professional and expert way, to help the whole country and demonstrate that all of Italy can eat thanks to culture, instead of let us eat on it only a privileged minority.