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05.06.2024 – Issue 1-2024 of the Sinappsi journal is available online. The new issue dedicates the monographic part to Essential Workers, vulnerable workers in the aftermath of the pandemic. Eight articles, signed by researchers and scholars who are experts on the subject, provide an overview of different areas of essential work, presenting analyses, data and experiences. The free-theme section, Saggi (Essays), presents a contribution dedicated to the empirical evidence of the New Skills Fund, analysing the microeconomic factors that influence the adoption and intensity of use of the Fund in Italian companies.
Who are essential workers? The concept suddenly entered our legal system with the decree of 14 March 2020 in the very first days of lockdown. The closure of the most visible and stereotypical workplaces, the offices, shops, and factories, and the emergence of daily dependence on specific forms of work – the food chain, distribution, and care – made the public realise that daily life and the very survival of society depend to a large extent on occupations that generally undertake little-considered work, to the point of becoming almost invisible. These are jobs characterised by physical effort, mostly manual tasks, an often precarious or poorly protected status, low pay and, in fact, social devaluation.
What remains of that attention today and what were the consequences of that experience? This is a question that Sinappsi attempts to answer. Taken together, the articles come to a twofold conclusion: essential jobs are increasingly carried out by people of immigrant origin, often without appropriate residence permits, or by workers who are ‘fragile’ in terms of wages, number of hours worked, welfare protections and who are placed on the margins of the labour market.
“Overall, this special issue aims to contribute to the objective of raising public attention towards essential and at the same time vulnerable work,” reads the Introduction signed by the issue’s editors, Maurizio Ambrosini, Guglielmo Meardi and Michele Raitano, “so as not to forget the commitment and also the sacrifice of these workers during the dramatic time of the pandemic, and to urge an opening towards a future of greater justice towards those who perform such important tasks for collective life and who are so systematically neglected.”
Read issue 1-2024.