Foggia, exploited labourers, forced to work up to 16 hours a day: 10 personal precautionary measures and 8 companies subjected to judicial control.
The conditions of exploitation to which numerous non-EU laborers from Africa were subjected, employed to work in the Capitanata countryside, all "residents" in the well-known slum of Borgo Mezzanone, where there is a camp that hosts around 2000 people, who live in precarious hygienic-sanitary conditions and in a strong state of need.
The prolonged, complex and detailed investigations, coordinated by the Public Prosecutor's Office of Foggia and conducted by the soldiers of the Operational and Radiomobile Unit of the Carabinieri Company of Manfredonia and by those of the Carabinieri Labor Inspectorate Unit of Foggia, started from the widespread situation of illegality rooted in the Foggia countryside, not indifferent to the Carabinieri who carry out territorial control services in that area on a daily basis.
Numerous vans, almost always without insurance and with their construction characteristics modified to allow them to transport up to 20/25 people instead of the 9 expected for that type of vehicle, is the situation we see every day as we pass through the countryside. On board vans and old cars you can see young laborers who, to earn some money, are willing to work even in evidently exploitative conditions.
Observation and shadowing services were enough for the Carabinieri to understand the dynamics: the labourers, almost all African, were taken from the slum of Borgo Mezzanone and from there, aboard precarious vehicles, they were transported to the nearby countryside of Stornara (FG), to then being employed to work in the fields at an exhausting pace, often without the required personal protective equipment and subject to strict controls by the corporals.
The clear picture of the situation represented at the Public Prosecutor's Office of Foggia, which had already provided precise directives on the phenomenon of gangmastering in the recent past, made it possible to launch the investigation called "Principi e Corporali", active from July to October 2020, conducted over that through numerous observation, control and shadowing services, also with the fundamental aid of the technical activities of telephone interception, thanks to which it was possible to crystallize the system of selection and recruitment of the workforce set up by the owners of the offending companies, father and two sons, who, making use of close and trusted collaborators, Italian and otherwise, had set up an "almost perfect" apparatus, which went from identifying the workforce necessary for working the fields, to its recruitment, up to the payment system , a result that is clearly different from the remuneration established by the CCNL, as well as by the pay scale for fixed-term agricultural workers in the province of Foggia.
The pay slips, in fact, were found to be untrue, since they indicated a number of working days lower than those actually worked by the workers, without taking into account rest periods and other days of holidays due. The workers, among other things, were not even subjected to the required medical examination.
The suspects, 10 in total, of which 2 in prison, 2 under house arrest and 6 subjected to the obligation to report to the prosecutor's office, are accused - for various reasons - of illicit intermediation and exploitation of labor, pursuant to art. . 603 bis of the penal code, recently amended with law 199/2016.
All subjects, SK, Ivorian aged 35, KA Senegalese aged 31, KS Guinean aged 31, as illicit intermediaries and recruiters of the workforce, DP aged 66, DA aged 31 and DR aged 40, father and children , Italians, owners of agricultural companies, as users of the workforce, FM aged 30 and FTE aged 56, Italians, as managers of hiring and payment of workers and DLA aged 44 and MN aged 58, Italians, control workers on the fields of the labourers, in competition, they hired, used or in any case employed manpower made up of dozens of African workers, with the aim of allocating it to the cultivation of agricultural land owned by, or in any case available to, the aforementioned businesses and companies, subjecting the aforementioned workers to conditions of exploitation and taking advantage of their state of need deriving from the precarious living conditions and the fact that they live in shacks and crumbling ruins within the area called "expista" of Borgo Mezzanone, also demanding money from them both for transport and for the hiring, with the aggravating circumstance of having committed the act by employing a number of workers greater than three.
In particular, the suspects, in competition, recruited and employed low-cost labor in various capacities, to allocate it to the cultivation of agricultural land in violation, in violation:
of national collective agreements, paying workers around 4 euros instead of 7;
of the sector regulations relating to working hours and rest periods,
of safety and hygiene in the workplace, as they employed the aforementioned workers without providing them with devices for the prevention of accidents (gloves, shoes, clothing, etc.), necessary for carrying out the tasks to which they were assigned and, indeed, forced them , where necessary, to purchase them at their expense or they were deducted from their monthly pay;
An equally important aspect is the tight control to which the laborers were subjected, implemented by the corporals at the instigation of today's suspects, who also imposed arbitrary disciplinary sanctions on them, devoid of any legal guarantee such as, for example, deducting €1 from their wages. from the salary because the counting of the boxes of tomatoes harvested was incorrect and/or threatening dismissal without repairing the damage they had inadvertently created, such as when during the works the padlock of a shutter was damaged for which they demanded payment of a sum, or even the payment of a sum to be included in the list of laborers to be hired and taken into consideration for future jobs
At the same time, in execution of the same order, the investigating judge of Foggia ordered the preventive seizure - including the relevant operational offices, the registered movable assets and the immovable properties and the subjection to judicial control - of 8 (eight) agricultural companies, attributable to 3 of subjects affected by precautionary measures. The judicial control of the company, introduced with law 199/2016 pursuant to art. 3, is that institution on the basis of which the judicial administrator supports the entrepreneur in the management of the company until the complete regularization of all employment relationships maintained and the removal of all irregularities found. It will always be the administrator, then, who authorizes the carrying out of administrative acts useful to the company, reporting to the judge every three months, and in any case whenever irregularities emerge regarding the performance of the company activity. All this, from the legislator's point of view, is an essential path to follow to prevent further and reprehensible situations of serious labor exploitation from occurring.
€10 million is the total value of the seized assets and €6 million is the annual turnover of the companies subjected to judicial control.
The complex and detailed investigations carried out by the soldiers of the NOR of the Manfredonia Company and those of the Labor Inspectorate Unit were carried out with the precious support of personnel from the SU.PRE.ME. project, who made a cultural mediator available to the investigations , employed by the Carabinieri in the technical activities of telephone interception as a valid and fundamental interpreter, whose contribution had a considerable impact on the success of the investigation.
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