UDINE. In construction sites there are no bricklayers, in restaurants there are waiters and even cooks, in metalworking companies and not only skilled workers, in agriculture tractor drivers and workers in stables, in the wards of doctors and nurses hospitals. Almost everywhere, the picture of the intersection of supply and demand for labor is bleak. The pandemic has not always favored training courses and the summer season has begun there are still those who are desperately looking for personnel.
Estimates
Antonio Dalla Mora, the national councilor of the Italian Federation of Public Exercises (FIPE) already a few weeks ago estimated the lack of about three thousand employees in the region. And while Coldiretti complains about the absence of tractor drivers and stables, the monthly report by Unioncamere Excelsior confirms that even the industry is struggling to find skilled labor. “In these sectors, highly specialized technicians stand out for requests and difficulties in finding: industrial engineers and technicians, IT, nurses, laboratory and diagnostic technicians, physiotherapists, employees in the organization of production activities, marketing experts” confirms the director of the Regional Labor Market Observatory, Carlos Corvino, according to whom there is a lack of qualified or semi-qualified professionals in trade and tourist services.
They range from sales people to cooks, waiters and bartenders. The situation in the construction sector is similar where, underlines the provincial president of Ance Udine, Angela Martina, “a new graduate from the construction school is contested by four companies”. Construction workers, i.e. bricklayers and carpenters, are practically unavailable. “Every year the Udine school trains 10 construction operators, at least 40 would be needed” adds Martina, pointing out that when construction is recovering, the biggest difficulty is finding staff. “It’s not a salary problem, sometimes they collect more than one engineer: they have paid travel, the protections guaranteed by the Construction Fund, they work in technological yards that are no longer those of the 1960s, yet young people no longer want to do this job “.
The escape from the trade centers
The situation seems almost unlikely, as the pandemic cuts employment, many places remain uncovered due to lack of staff. The trade unions reject the thesis of many according to which as long as the citizenship income continues to be paid, many will not give up the certain check to take other paths. “It is an unlikely thesis – assures Rossana Giacaz of the regional secretariat of the CGIL – also because the citizenship income is modulated through the family Isee”. Luciano Bordin of the CISL regional secretariat of the same opinion: “That of citizenship income is an ideological thesis, especially if they have a family of masons, cooks and waiters do not give up wages for 700 euros per month”.
The trade unions make it a matter of lack of planning, of the intersection between supply and demand of work, of the application of collective agreements: “You cannot think of proposing a part-time split in two hours in three different places”, says Bordin, while according to Giacaz, “the seasonal workers, thanks to the pandemic that blocked them for over a year, will have found another job. Let’s not forget that even before the pandemic, seasonal jobs were the result of a precarization that remained, in a health emergency, without aid ». In a severe tone Giacaz warns: “To say that young people do not want to work is ungenerous and very angry.”
The facets are many, Corvino knows well that a different reality from his Photographic Observatory: “Often – he says – generic experience is required, having made the seasons, with the possibility of hiring not exactly specialized figures, perhaps young at first experience, foreigners, with seasonal or even on-demand contracts. From the data available to us, many seasonal workers have converted to other tasks and activities, they work as laborers, warehouse workers or maintenance workers, so now they no longer constitute the “hard core” available ».