It is a timely document that brings to the forefront the manual mastery that unites very different trades: from the surgeon to the specialized technician, the restorer as well as the pruner. Skills and competencies needed by the three Fs of Made in Italy excellence: Food, Fashion, Factory, much appreciated by the companies present at the meeting representing the manufacturing world.
"We need to convince ourselves that it is imperative to train and make known, without cultural discrimination, the potential for employment and personal satisfaction that comes from the skilled work of the hands," stressed Fr. Fabrizio Bonalume, General Director CNOS-FAP, "an inexhaustible value that is a social and economic wealth."
Pierluigi Bartolomei, General Director of Elis, underscored the concept: "Specialized, traditional and pioneering courses centered on manual labor should be funded, with immediate effect. Manual work is good work! Of equal dignity with all other trades. Talents must be brought out, we must be able to speak with the works and demonstrate to young people and institutions, how pivotal these jobs are in our society."
The Manifesto is available in full at the bottom of the page.
Opening the debate, Senator Paola Binetti reiterated the value of the meeting she strongly advocated and its goals: "Young people can and must be protagonists in the process of transforming the world of work. It is up to them to change things and show that they are capable of doing so. But for this, they need a new model of formation."
The Manifesto, drafted by Prof. Dario Nicoli of the Department of Sociology at the Catholic University of Brescia, stems from a concrete analysis of the data available today and a socioeconomic reading of Italy: almost one in two positions available does not find a corresponding worker, either due to lack of candidates or lack of adequate preparation.
"Today we live the negative consequences of the denigration of manual labor, despite the fact that this is happiness. There is an underlying desire to escape the alienation of professional abstractionism, to be able to do and concretize one's craftsmanship," Professor Nicoli relates. "On the other hand, there is the cry of pain of companies that cannot find workers and qualified positions. It is a blatant absurdity!"
The Manifesto proposes, in summary, five points to reverse the course caused by decades of devaluation:
– orientation, which is also awareness;
– education to work through a policy of relaunching/fostering formation/vocational training paths that aligns Italy with Europe;
– labor policies with work grants, but also with initiatives that dare to innovate such as ad hoc contracts for business succession;
– the revitalization/fostering of craft work;
– and the protection of manual labor, which cannot be separated from a review of labor contracts that also economically increase the wages of manual labor.
The concreteness and the need for so many unobtainable professional figures meant that, in just a few weeks, the document was signed by more than 90 companies.
The program for good work/decent jobs was finally submitted to the ministers who spoke at the meeting, Andrea Orlando, for the implications on Labor and, Patrizio Bianchi, for the responsibilities on Education.
