Italy

Solidarity in the corona crisis and afterSix weeks after the first corona virus case was reported in Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel opened herself up to questions from the public for the first time. In an urgent appeal to the population, she called for solidarity: “Our reason, our heart for one another” were being put to the test, she said, and she hoped we would pass the test. But how solidary can a society be when its social relations of which are based on competition, the credo of which is “every man for himself, every man for his own”? ...
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For the coming weeks, RLS Brussels Office will publish clips from colleagues, comrades, and friends from Europe and beyond giving personal impressions of the crisis, the measures, living and coping. Vladimir, Postman and activist at Potere al Popolo gives us first-hand information on the situation in Italy.
© European Union 2019 – Source: EP
© European Union 2019 – Source: EP
It is August 21, 2019, and at 15.09 in the afternoon the news of the day in Italy are the undocumented migrants who jump into the water near the island of Lampedusa out of the Open Arms ship that rescued them. The Italian Ministry of Internal Affairs and deputy Prime Minister, as well as head of the governmental party of the Northern League, Matteo Salvini, forbid the entry of the NGO boat into the harbor of Lampedusa. This was possible thanks to the law voted by the yellow-green alliance (5 Stars Movement and Northern ...
read more "The “Ursula” affair splits Italian populism (and the left)"

Industry 4.0

Christopher Wimmer
  New Challenges for the European World of Work   We appear to be on the cusp of a new age. The era of digitalisation looks set to revolutionise the status quo, from the world of work to the way we live, from leisure activities and public space through to politics and privacy. Technically, the term ‘digitalisation’ refers to the enhancement of information and communication processes by means of digital storage, transmission and processing technology. Innovative hardware and software allows these processes to take place faster and more flexibly and be less ...
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Das Gewerkschaftshaus der Union Sindicale de Base (USB) im Ghetto von Foggia.
Das Gewerkschaftshaus der Union Sindicale de Base (USB) im Ghetto von Foggia.
Today, we can find cheap tomatoes from Italy in almost every supermarket and weekly farmers' market in Europe. However, the country of origin indicated on the vegetable crates or cans of tomatoes says nothing about the real living and working conditions on the fields and in the greenhouses of Southern Italy. But the price does, since it is the result of price pressure on producers and farmers and reflects the hard work of the exploited people who often work and live under slave-like conditions. The issue of migration to ...
read more "Exploitation and trade unions on Southern Italy’s tomato fields"
Image: cristian, italian election / Flickr / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 [creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/]
Image: cristian, italian election / Flickr / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 [creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/]
A total anomaly or a revealing laboratory? In order to understand the results of the Italian general elections of 4 March 2018, to grasp the current situation and to outline future scenarios, we first have to take into account what happened over the past seven years and the reform of the electoral law that preceded the vote. The electoral law reform and the defeat of the "Establishment Party" The new law, approved in November 2017, is a majoritarian-proportional mixed system, which currently provides a share (about 35 percent) of elected ...
read more "Italy: the electoral tsunami and the neoliberal spell"