CFNSI trade union press release
Today the journalists are going back on strike for the renewal of their employment contracts, which have expired ten years ago, the only category of employed workers in Italy. This is the second day of strike in a package of five, the third has already been proclaimed for April 16th.
Having a renewed contract is not a privilege. Being paid decently, inside and outside the editorial offices, is not a privilege. Working without permanent precariousness is not a privilege. Providing free, professional and independent information, without economic blackmail, is a right. Ensuring decent conditions for those who work, for those entering the profession and for those leaving it is an obligation. Ensuring a future for information, a common good protected by the Constitution, by article 21 intimately connected to article 36, is a social duty.
Publishers, on the other hand, prefer to pass on the costs of work to the community. The numbers speak for themselves: between 2024 and 2026 they received 162 million euros in public contributions for paper copies sold; in the same two-year period another 66 million for 1,012 early retirements; between 2022 and 2025 they saved around 154 million on the purchase of paper, between 2024 and 2026 they will have another 17.5 million for investments in innovative technologies.
These are privileges for very few and, moreover, for all Italians.
Since April 1st 2016, the expiry of the last contract, everything has changed: workloads and work paces have increased dramatically, multi-platform performances, almost phantom editorial staff. Wages, however, have remained stagnant, further eroded by inflation or even reduced by wild flat rates.
Recognizing the dignity of work is the starting point for a serious discussion. Instead it is described as an excess. It is a wrong and dangerous narrative, which undermines the foundations of the work and the quality of information. Without rights and protections, journalism dies. And with it democracy.
This strike does not defend privileges. It defends a simple principle, a right: our work is worth it.
Answer FIEG
In a context of serious structural crisis for companies and workers, public contributions have allowed publishing companies to continue producing and distributing quality information and to face the challenges of digital and artificial intelligence.
The FIEG publishers, despite the reduction in average daily copies sold from 2,500,000 in December 2016 to just over 1,000,000 today and a halving of revenues in the last decade, have used huge amounts of their own resources to guarantee the pluralism of information, investments in products and above all the protection of jobs, allowing the sector to be one of the few in Italy where there are no collective layoffs.
In fact, it was possible to avoid dismissals without invoking privileges, but through the use of sector regulations – which require both significant investments and new hires – and this has always happened with the consent of the union. The funding for early retirement has not been “received” by the companies, but directly finances access to early retirement for journalists.
The situation has worsened with the competition from free content disseminated by digital platforms and social media which, without having the responsibility and costs of publishers, mean that more and more users receive information, often of dubious quality, without directly accessing editorial sites, causing a decrease in the user base and advertising revenues. And even in this case the path of responsibility was pursued, avoiding drastic interventions on employment levels.
Despite the serious difficulties of the sector, which are certainly not attributable to the publishers, given the presence of the same critical issues in other countries, we find ourselves faced with a union that has shown no willingness to sit at the table to face the challenge of modernizing the national employment contract, preferring to take refuge behind economic requests to recover inflation which is already guaranteed by the automatic remuneration mechanisms of the contract.
The editors therefore believe that the FNSI’s position of proclaiming a new strike in a difficult moment like today and of unilaterally breaking off the negotiations by rejecting, with the contract unchanged, a sustainable economic offer that is in any case higher than that of the last renewal is not very constructive.
