Florence, the revolt of the precarious libraries
Libraries, the revolt of the precarious. Faced with the announcement of the re-internalization of the service and a bridging contract that promises salary cuts or staff reductions, the 100 workers of the Florentine municipal libraries held a heated assembly at the Obate. And now they turn to the mayor Dario Nardella with an open letter: “Really do like La Pira, mayor. Don’t leave the workers on the street”.
This is an old story. For over 15 years, Florentine libraries have been carrying on with outsourcing and tenders. Since 2007, since the Oblates opened. It goes on from procurement to procurement, from renewal to renewal. Palazzo Vecchio has now decided to re-internalize the service. But while waiting, he decided to make a two-year bridging contract. With fewer resources. And the precarious are not there. They will meet Mayor Nardella on December 23rd. But they protest and mobilize: “After several meetings with the trade unions and various questions of the municipal council’s utility, it seems that the will of the administration was to continue with a short-term contract, preparatory to a process of re-internalizing the service. This had been announced to us by the former councilor for culture Tommaso Sacchi, who later moved to Milan. Now, however, a few days after the release of the new call for tenders, we discover that there will be a short-term contract, but with two million euros less than what was estimated in the two-year purchase and service purchase program. Two million which translates into about 15 fewer people with full-time contracts or in a general reduction in working hours, therefore in salary, already far lower than what we would be entitled to if the contract corresponding to our duties were applied. This cut cannot be justified only with the early start of the process of re-internalizing the service, which is being carried out drawing on the recent graduation of the competition for administrative instructor: in fact, dealing with administrative staff – necessary in libraries, in archives and in the entire Culture Department to cover part of the turnover – which however cannot cover purely librarian and archival roles “.
“This, Mayor, – continue the temporary workers – is a severe blow to the professionalism of us workers and contract workers who, on the one hand, we see ourselves reducing the resources initially calculated for the needs of libraries and Historical Archives and, on the other , we find ourselves cut off from the process of re-internalization, which originally had to have a different timing and had to be preceded by the calling of a specific competition for professional profiles inherent to the activities such as, in which to be ways of enhancing experience and professionalism of those who have guaranteed this service for 15 years. However, the decision to anticipate the timing of the re-internalization would still give the possibility to hold these competitions, using the simplified procedures provided for by Legislative Decree 44/2021 which, in addition to speeding up the timing of the competition itself, it provides for the evaluation of service titles and professional experience for the purposes of the final score of precise economic and political choices, there is a risk of undermining a service built with effort and dedication, choosing in an unfair way to always penalize precarious workers “.