Since Italy opened up after the pandemic, newspapers are full of interviews with prominent entrepreneurs and restaurateurs claiming a shortage of young people willing to work and their over-expectation of salary, vacations and days off.
This wave of criticism towards Gen Z has tended to portray the latter as a bunch of slackers and idlers, who prefer to benefit from social assistance rather than rolling up their sleeves and work. This phenomenon is not new, as already in 2012 then-Italian Minister of Labour blamed youth for being too “choosy” when entering the job market. Moreover, the image of a young boy laying on his sofa while doing nothing is so rooted in public opinion that it has become a stereotype capable of discrediting an entire generation.
“The youth? They prefer not to give their weekend up to have fun with friends. And when they come to try to work they’re arrogant as if they’ve made it, expecting to receive high salaries since the beginning. I may be unpopular, but I’ve no problem at all to say that learning by working doesn’t mean you have necessarily to be paid”: these were the words that caused last April 14th the polemic we’re talking about. They were pronounced, during an interview to Il Corriere della Sera, by Alessandro Borghese, Chef, restaurateur and host of many cooking shows.
He was soon backed by Italian Entrepreneur Flavio Briatore, former husband of top-model Naomi Campbell and known for his always controversial stances. Since they’ve expressed their view, lots of restaurateurs and businessmen have spoken out in favor of Borghese. Amongst them even Italian worldwide famous singer Al Bano and the issue has surprisingly entered the Parliament debate.
Are their claims true? There’s no real answer, ‘cause there’s no real question: a thing like “the youth” simply doesn’t exist, it is made up of different individuals with different lives, expectations and needs. However all the critics usually forget to explain what are the widespread hiring conditions imposed on young people seeking work.
Undeclared work and exploitation are commonplace and this pushes many young workers to have the desire for a more dignified job.
On the Instagram account of the Italian political movement Possibile it can be read this: “I signed an intern contract at a famous bar in my area, but I worked twelve hours from 5 pm to 8 in the morning, without any pause and always in a rush. Six days after the signature, the employer came to me with 120 euros [$129, roughly 1.6 euros ($1.70) per hour.] Of course I immediately escaped away from that infernal place.”
Situations like this are far from uncommon, and they’re widespread through all the tourist enterprises in Italy, where waiters, lifeguards and factotum are often underpaid or hired without satisfying legal requirements.
It is impossible that people like Borghese or Briatore don’t know about any of these predicaments, and this is clear in Borghese’s statement that “learning by working doesn’t mean you have necessarily to be paid”. The long-standing tradition in the country of underpaid apprenticeship backs his stance, but the evolution of the job market simply makes this reasoning no more affordable for a young worker.
When Borghese, Briatore and most of the protesting employers started their career the free apprenticeship was able to open perspectives of a stable workplace in the future. Nowadays, due to the economic crisis, as well as to a surge of precarious work, this idea of a life-long work has become nothing but a myth.
Indeed in Italy, recent data collected by the National Council of the Youth reveal how half of the people under 35 have experienced unregistered or precarious work, unemployment, as well as harassment in the working place. Most of them live with an annual salary below 10,000 euros ($10,781 USD), which doesn’t allow young people to be autonomous, obliging them to still be housed by their parents.
This data barely supports the idea of a slacker generation, but it rather shows a generation sacrificing itself for really little money. Their request, so much blamed by the entrepreneurs, of a higher salary, vacations and days off, mirror the 20th century struggle for working rights that have crossed Italy, a country with certain legal guarantees for workers (like the Workers’ Statute, 1970) that on paper were and still are an progressive in the world, but are today often ignored.
It should be no surprise then that today’s youth has sought to claim those rights their grandparents and parents had fought for. What’s happening indeed is a rise of consciousness by the youth of the country that is helped in a way by their critics too, because their criticism often seems so unacceptable that it draws so much attention to the matter, especially on social networks.
Covid-19 has had certainly an impact on this attitude of seeking dignified working conditions, as a surge in resignations during the last year suggests, they’re looking for a bright future after the darkest hour of the lockdown. Therefore, the misunderstanding between them and the entrepreneurs is based on a different time perspective: the first ones have some needs for their life, the latter just for the next tourist season.
Author
Dario Pio Muccilli is the Star-Revue’s Italian correspondent, based in Turin. Email him at muccillidariopio@gmail.com
