Articles by: Judith Harris

ROME – For decades early September was marked by the outdoor evenings of wine and sausages, fun and political debate, called the “Feste dell’Unita’,” organized by the Italian Communist party (PCI) in honor of its official daily, L’Unita’. That party organ ended when the PCI, founded in 1921, gave up the ghost in 1991. This summer the paper’s name also faded away, gallantly but financially bankrupt. The PCI was replaced more or less by the Partito Democratico, whose current head, Premier Matteo Renzi, has no link whatsoever with the old PCI of Antonio Gramsci and Palmiro Togliatti. Nevertheless, even as the names and the party-goers have changed, the feast goes on, and Feste dell’Unita’ are being held all over Italy, especially in the North, where they were kicked off in late August in the old red capital of Bologna.

Like the Feste, some of the problems from those old days remain current today, still unresolved, and among the government’s reform proposals for education and the judiciary, the toughest which Premier Renzi must address may well be revision of labor legislation drafted in the Sixties. At the heart of the problem is a clause of the Statuto dei Lavoratori, or “Workers’ Bill of Rights,” adopted in 1970. The Statuto reflected the participation of the Italian Socialist party in a center-left governing coalition, and was incorporated into Italian law. 

Its Article 18 has been under fire for the past 14 years. Its chief provision is that, workers in companies with over 15 employees are entitled to keep their jobs unless the employer can demonstrate legitimate cause for firing them. All was well-meant in the climate of 1970, and, because its aim was to protect workers from casual dismissal, the Statuto and its Article 18 had strong support from the powerful big three trade unions of the time (by order of size, the Communist CGIL the Catholic CISL, and the small, middle-of- the road UIL).

Today’s labor lawyers explain that the power of Article 18 derives from its being primarily a deterrent; court battles over unfair dismissal have been few and far between. One justification for firing an employee is “gross negligence,” as in theft, but otherwise under its terms fair dismissal is hard to show. Because the Italian system does not contemplate merit, its lack— demerit—is otherwise not a consideration. Being there, as in showing up every day for work, is its own merit, and the worker is generally home and dry before a judge if he proves that he was faithfully present. The law, moreover, provides that, when a court finds that the dismissed employee has been treated unfairly, the company must not only provide him financial compensation, but also give him back his job. (For details, see: http:// www.quagliarella.com/lav35.html)

Since the year 2000 successive governments have tried to change this, but with little success. Even today, business leaders pleading for more mobility in the work force go ignored. Aggravating the situation is today’s lackluster GNP, which has been sinking over the past six years at an annual average rate of 1.65%. Despite the fact that 2010 showed positive growth, with an upward surge of 1.7%, what followed has been negative, with growth still declining in July of 2014 by 0.2% and unemployment stuck at 12.6% of the work force.

The unions in turn ignore the financial crisis, and the bewildering list of local and national strikes called this month and last affects hospitals, airports, trains, buses, university research institutes, telecommunications, maritime transport and local administrations. On Sept. 1, a one-hour strike was held in schools and another short strike by some local police.

Speaking at the Comunione e Liberazione end-of-summer meeting at Rimini (the Catholic version of the Festa dell’Unita’), Renzi’s labor minister Giuliano Poletti acknowledged that “change is indispensable” in the labor market. “If we do not bring about real change, what follows will be a lot of talk, lots of analyses, but no results.” On the other hand, he went on to say, a head-on confrontation over Article 18 would not be useful; and what the  government needs is “a different, comprehensive approach. A head-on tug- of-war over this would not be useful.”

Licia Mattioli, president of the Turin industrial association and vice president of the national Confindustria association of industrialists, took a more pragmatic approach. “If we want to relaunch the economy we must address the question of Article 18,” she said in a recent interview. “Economic reform cannot be put on hold. The Senate reform was a success despite a thousand obstacles: [the government] said they would do it, and they did. But that was not enough, and today Article 18 is at the center of the debate.”

Mattioli also pointed out that Turin industrialists need funds to replace aging, eco-unfriendly machinery so as to upgrade their production. Lacking mobility in the work force, funds for this are lacking. Asked if this did not mean the risk of “abandoning people,” she replied: “I believe that anything is better than just staying behind a paycheck while you lose skills.”

ROME – Okay, many of us won’t be heading back to school in September, but the approaching end of summer nevertheless rouses complex emotions. There is melancholy – those lazy, hot days so are over – but also the awareness that, as the first yellowing leaves proclaim the opening of a new chapter in our lives, novelty is in the winds. The novelties here begin with the presentation Sept. 2 at the 71st Cinema Biennale of Venice of Gabriele Salvatores’ film “Italy in a Day” (Un giorno da Italiani), billed as “Italy’s first do-it-yourself film.”

 

And so it is: cinema-selfies, compiled into a documentary after Oscar-winning director Salvatores invited anyone who cared to make his or her own video to do so, all on the same day for twenty-four hours on Oct. 26, 2013, and send it to him for compilation. Over 44,000 Italians responded, sending him 2,200 hours of images plus 632 edited videos, which were reviewed by a team of forty editors. “This is the first Italian experiment in collective movie-making,” he said. Producer is RAI Cinema together with Ridley Scott; back in the year 2000 Salvatores had done something similar for RAI on the boutique level. “The idea was to tell, through your look or your voice, what you consider important or what sparks your emotions,” he explains. “On the 26th people were just to film with phone or telecamera whatever they care deeply about.” You too can enter into Italian cinema history, he promised.

 

Also making history in its own way: at ancient Pompeii thirty new custodians were just hired. Until now no new custodians were hired when one retired, and their numbers inevitably fell by almost half in the past decade, even though custodians there must do night and weekend duty; unlike public museums, the site has no weekly day when it is shut. They also work year round, no matter how inclement the weather.

 

Custodial care at Pompeii is almost uniquely important. Besides the occasional hacking out of pieces of fresco painting, there are other problems. On the off-chance anyone missed it, three giddily misbehaving youths were arrested one night this August for breaking into and entering the Suburban Baths, which are located just below the Marine Gate (these are public baths with dirty pictures over the lockers). The three seem to have taken the dirty pictures all too literally.

 

Other good news, showing that the new EU and Italian funding for Pompeii is producing results, is that ten heretofore closed Pompeian houses opened this August to visitors after restoration. They are the House of Marcus Lucretius, House of Cornelia, the Thermopolium of Vetutius Placidus (take-out food stall, that is), the House of the Ceii, the House of the Lararius of Achille, the very important House of Frontone, the House of the Ara Massima (Great Altar), the House of Apollo, the House of the Ancient Hunt (Caccia Antica) and, yes, those same Suburban Baths which were invaded by the three wayward youths.

 

Even the sometimes waspy Salvatore Settis, the archeologist who is one of Italy’s most venerable public intellectuals, is waxing enthusiastic about the progress being made in reversing the decline of Pompeii. For 20 years, he writes, wrong-headed reforms, incompetent commissioners, do-nothing administrators, lack of personnel and the Camorra combined to degrade the site but finally, thanks to the EU’s donation of E105 million (which includes a hefty grant from Italy itself), “has produced a real leap forward.” Of 39 projects, the ten above were completed, and in coming months another 17 will go forward. “In short, something is moving,” he exulted in L’Espresso magazine July 14, “and in the right direction.”

 

But the autumn will also be enlivened by an interesting quarrel involving antiquities, in this case the world-famous Bronzes of Riace – two magnificent warriors, one youthful, the other more mature, cast of bronze in the 5th century BC who were fished out of the sea near Riace in Reggio Calabria in 1972. They are splendid statues, now on view in the National Museum of Magna Grecia at Reggio. (For details, see >>>  They have been in the headlines over Ferragosto because intellectual gadfly Vittorio Sgarbi proposed they be brought to Milan as star turns at Expo 2015, the giant trade fair. Archaeologist Salvatore Settis objected wrathfully that this was not appropriate because, first, visitors can go to the museum in Reggio to see them; secondly, because they are “too fragile” to travel; and, finally, because if they are on loan to Milan for the trade fair there, they will then be allowed to go on tour all over the world, to the detriment of both Reggio and the ancient bronze warriors. So far culture minister Dario Franceschini is weighing the arguments on both sides.

 

The Italian culture scene will also be enlivened by the less well known but no less fascinating, entirely renovated Orto Botanico of Padua. The world’s oldest botanical garden, it dates from 1545 and was created to grow medicinal plants; given its academic matrix, it is still maintained by the University of Padua. As of Sept. 15 its doors will open showing, along with the ancient Orto dei Semplici, the brand new Biodiversity Garden, composed of five pavilions, from jungle to desert motifs, with the introduction of new space technologies. It is recognized by UNESCO as a world cultural heritage site.

 

ROME – Politics grab the headlines, but politics are about people and their day-to-day concerns. So, for a summer’s day change of pace, here are a few of the issues that are troubling—and delighting—Italians today.
 

ITEM: Down at the Crypta Balbi, a museum near Largo Argentina, archaeologists have just uncovered both an ancient temple with an arched altar devoted to various divinities, as well as an ancient laundry or, in Latin, a “fullonica.” The temple findings suggest it was devoted probably to such Greek divinities as Artemis, Aphrodite, and Dionysos (whose mask was found), but also to Isis, imported from Egypt. Like the temple, the laundry, replete with a series of basins for washing togas, was in use during the 2d and perhaps the 3d Centuries AD; next to it was a latrine, perhaps because urine, containing ammonia, was used for cleaning clothes. According to archeologist Laura Vendittelli, museum director, “The fullonica is the first evidence of a commercial property dating from the empirical era in this neighborhood.” The discoveries were made in April 2013 and the excavation just completed. Visitors can tour the newly discovered area. The Crypta, by the way, was a portico built by the “condottiero” Cornelius Balbus in 13 BC on the side of a theater.

ITEM: The country is going to the dogs! In June two African wild dogs gave birth in the Rome Zoo, renamed the Bioparco of Rome. Painted dogs, as they are usually called, have been in the zoo since 1982 and the zoo keepers are proud to report that Rome’s is one of the few in Europe in which various litters of this endangered species have been born. The whole pack tends the pups, chewing food and then passing it into their mouths.

ITEM: In a disastrous error Dec. 13 in the public Pertini Hospital, two test tubes were swapped, with the result that a two fertilized embryos were implanted into the womb of the wrong woman, who will shortly give birth to twins. The genetic parents are asking $1.35 million damages and also hope to have the babies, once born, handed over to them. The Lazio Region appealed to the National Bioethic Committee (CNB) for an opinion. On July 12, after a month of study and debate, the CNB responded that, at this point, it is impossible to determine who is the real mother, genetic or generating, but that the children must be able to count upon parents, whoever they are, and must whatever the outcome be told the truth at the appropriate time. Accompanying this is the committee’s recommendation that the warring couples work it out in what is an ethical, religious and very human modern problem, with no simple, self-evident solution. In a quickie survey a Roman newspaper reported that 55% of those voting said that the generating mother was to keep them, 45% the biological mother. DNA exams supposedly proved the error, but while some express doubts, on July 30 the Rome prosecutors archived the case because no criminal act was involved.

ITEM: The Communist daily L’Unita’ is deeply in debt (some say to the amount of over $3 million) and published its final edition July 31, under a headline that it promised to return. Left-leaning nostalgics were deeply troubled when the paper ran its final headline: “L’Unita’ e’ viva” (L’Unita’ is alive); the previous day had been a sorrowing mega-headline and, inside, blank pages. The newspaper had been founded by Antonio Gramsci in 1924, not long before Benito Mussolini shoved his way into power. The paper was the organ of the Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI), which, with a quarter of the Italian electorate in the postwar years, was the most influential leftist party in Europe at that time. In the Sixties it sold 280,000 copies daily; recent sales have slumped to barely 20,000 copies. Recently the Berlusconi passionaria Daniela Santanche had threatened to buy it, to which the editorial response was: Better dead than Santanche. A move is underway to find help from the middle-of-the-road, vaguely left-leading Premier Matteo Renzi’s Partito Democratico (PD). The editorial comment from the rival daily “Il Fatto Quotidiano” was that “L’Unita’ was more than a newspaper, it was a distinctive sign of belonging...” For Beppe Grillo, this was good news because the paper was “fascist” and had enjoyed overly large government subsidies.

ITEM: Now, vulgar gossip. Supposedly Silvio Berlusconi, the 78-year- old former premier, and his partner from Naples, Francesca Pascale, who celebrated her 29th birthday, are quarreling. The rumor is that he and others in the reconstituted Forza Italia were not pleased at Francesca’s joining the gay rights association, and that, when Silvio was cleared of wrong- doing in the Ruby Heart-breaker affair, he seems to have decided to clean up his household affairs; reportedly she has personal political ambitions in Naples, which happens to be how the two met, when she headed a pro-Silvio committee. Francesca has formally denied any crisis with her “fiance,” as they describe each other; and in an interview with the pop magazine Oggi Silvio himself said that it is true that she had passed a difficult time, but that it is over.

ROME –Giorgio Napolitano has pitted the considerable weight of his presidency and his prestige against the delaying tactics that currently tie the Senate into knots. The belated introduction of 7,800 amendments to the government’s proposals for constitutional reform, beginning with revision of the role of the Senate itself, is already causing “serious damage,” said Napolitano Wednesday. Some proposals on the table may be serious, but others are plainly opportunistic. They range from reducing the status of overseas voting constituencies to giving each regional government its own patriotic song and changing the name of the Chamber of Deputies to “Duma.” A single amendment discussed yesterday required 90 minutes of debate before it was voted.

In the Senate itself wits warn with genuine despair, “This way we’ll finish by New Year’s Eve of 2015.” Even if somehow bundled together and reduced to a few hundred, as many hope, this extraordinarily large number of amendments may keep the Senate in session daily through August 15, from early morning until midnight, and, after a summer break, into late September. This wildcat obstructionism, Premier Matteo Renzi warned this week, could even precipitate national general elections next Spring. If so, Renzi also warns, “Change is here and cannot be stopped: it’s like a letter at the post office -- once in the mail it will not be returned to sender.”

Taking a hefty share of the blame for the outsized number are Beppe Grillo’s Movimento Cinque Stelle (M5S) and Nichi Vendola’s Sinistra Ecologia Liberta’ (SEL). A further complication is that over 900 are to be voted by secret ballot, meaning no accountability for those who officially support the government but are not above seizing the opportunity to torpedo it. For this reason Senate President Pietro Grasso has come under criticism from Renzi’s Partito Democratico (PD) for sticking to the rules in allowing ballot secrecy.

Meanwhile, former Premier Silvio Berlusconi is once again a major player even though his reborn party Forza Italia (FI) has become a battlefield, and is reportedly seriously short of funds. Few could have predicted that, convicted for tax fraud by Italy’s high court, Berlusconi would be acquitted last Friday from another important trial, this rotating around his generous payments to, and evenings with, an underage foreign girl known to the press as Ruby the Heart Stealer. Following Ruby’s arrest for stealing money from her roommate, Berlusconi personally telephoned police to ask her release into the hands of a friend of his, Nicole Minetti. The charges brought him to trial and a seven-year sentence on charges that included prostitution with a minor and interfering with justice.

The full acquittal by the appeals court overturned the lower court’s conviction of Berlusconi for his generous payments to, and evenings with, Ruby. Two versions exist of the political consequences of this acquittal. The first is Berlusconi’s own crowing that the new decision shows that he was innocent all along. For the first time he found charitable words for the judiciary, and some of his supporters are insisting that, because the appeals court found him innocent, he has the right to a financial settlement to repay the high political and personal costs of his conviction by the lower court. Berlusconi himself crowed that post-decision polls show support for his party moving above 17% and growing “without my saying a word.”

There is also a more diabolical version of the appeals court decision – that the justices threw out the case because they know that prosecutors will now demand a review by the higher, constitutional court, the Cassations. Without speaking on the merits of the case, the high court can then find, if they exist, technical flaws which would require retrial. It assumes that, at age 78, Berlusconi’s political future is limited at any rate, and that his quarrelsome party has already been cut down to size.

If this is a correct reading, it would be less habeus corpus than tempus fugit. More importantly, for his apparent rehabilitation also relieves him of the need to threaten to pull out of his agreement on election law reform, which had been hammered out by Berlusconi and Premier Matteo Renzi last February. The current political scene being a three-way draw, it relieves Renzi of the need to come to terms with Beppe Grillo. If this is the correct reading, it is Machiavelli all over again.

Most seriously, it is worth recalling that in a sideshow of the Ruby affair last March the Cassations court found against the Berlusconi version. After the arrest, magistrate Annamaria Fiorillo had ordered Ruby, then age 17, to be accompanied to a home for wayward girls. But because of Berlusconi’s phone call, Ruby was instead handed over to Berlusconi associate Minetti. When this caused a flap, the then Interior Minister Roberto Maroni of the Northern League (which at the time supported the government Berlusconi headed) declared that this had been the proper action. The high council of the magistracy (CSM) agreed with the minister and imposed sanctions against Fiorillo.

Fiorillo nevertheless courageously objected at the interference. Maroni responded by taking the case to the Cassations court and accusing her of defaming him. Maroni lost; a magistrate has a right to “defend herself from denigration and defamation,” the Cassations court ruled at that time. In short, it ain’t over until the fat lady in the Cassations court sings.