Almost 62,000 workers undocumented on farms in Sicily

 On the Italian island of Sicily, some 62,000 people are working under the table in the agricultural sector. Of them, 47,000 are Italian nationals and 14,000 are of foreign origins, according to data released by the SiciliaSfruttaZero campaign last week.

Out of a total of 280,000 irregular workers across all sectors on the Italian island of Sicily, almost 62,000 are working in the agricultural field, including 47,000 Italians and 14,000 of foreign origins.

Labor exploitation continues to be widespread across the island and is known to negatively affect 52 areas with the greatest concentration in Ragusa and the surrounding territory.

The largest number of investigations into cases of labor exploitation are seen in the southern part of Italy: 252 out of a total of 432 across the entire country between 2011 and 2023. Of them, 99 were filed in the Puglia region and 62 in Sicily.

Lack of regional inspectors with only 49 across Sicily
These figures were released by SiciliaSfruttaZero, a platform created by associations and unions that has warned that the regional labor inspectorate has only 49 inspectors for monitoring all the businesses across the entire island.

This, they note, means that every business can be inspected only once every 25 years.

Penelope, Coordinamento Solidarietà Sociale Ets, Flai Cgil Sicilia, Centro Studi Pio La Torre, Legacoop Sicilia, Rete Fattorie Sociali Sicilia, and Arci Sicilia created the platform to promote anti-exploitation activities, protect workers, and especially create minimal conditions to ensure that the rights of workers are respected as well as an equilibrium between the productive sphere, institutions, and exploited workers.

Proposals by the platform
Among the proposals advanced by the platform is the creation of a society of social work professionals with testing of a chance to access basic social services for undocumented migrants in the area; a fast-track procedure for judicial cases into exploitation and forcing into slavery, providing a set timeline for the issuing of stay permits by the prosecutor's office; income for migrants that report their exploitation during the period between their identification and the issuing of stay permits; a pact for emersion and social inclusion; and access rights for victims of exploitation.

Other requests include involving quality-based agricultural labor practices, transparency in supply and demand, and incentives for the registering with a network of quality-based agriculture, as well as ones for incentives for socially responsible behaviour by businesses, an ethics-linked label, as well as actions for linguistic integration, the development of entrepreneurship, and the creation of microcredit: all incentives and actions that can render migrants free to invest their work and receive in turn sufficient wages.