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Naturland Fair

Building a partnership between Naturland and NoCap Associazione in Italy

Thomas Beutler, Naturland e.V.

Naturland has been working with Italian producers and processors since its foundation during the 1980s. Due to a complex mixture of various factors, however, Italy is considered a high-risk country in terms of social responsibility. On the one hand, the complex mixture is due to the regionally differing and thus nationally non-uniform labor laws with incomplete state control bodies. On the other hand, Italy is one of Europe's largest ports of call for refugees from the Arab, Asian, and sub-Saharan regions because of its external EU border on the Mediterranean Sea. Thus, about half of Italy's agricultural workforce (about 500,000) has a migrant background. 

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The fact that these people are increasingly exposed to exploitative conditions is proven by data from the Osservatorio Placido Rizzotto Institute: 80% of the labor force without a work contract are migrants and more than 130,000 people work under precarious conditions and are at acute risk of exploitation (1). This exploitation is partially organized by the caporalato system. "Caporalato" is the informal recruitment of workers by intermediaries ("caps") who illegally not only pay workers’ wages far below the minimum wage threshold, but also impose arbitrary wage cuts as well as costly "fringe benefits" - for example, transportation/ board (2).

This system of labor intermediation is considered a form of modern slavery. This is why the "Anti-Caporalato Law" was passed in Italy in 2016- initiated by Yvan Sagnet among others - but according to the organization NoCap ("No Caporalato"), up to 4.8 billion euros are still being transacted annually under this "business model" (3). So far, Naturland operations have not been affected by exploitative intermediation practices. However, to continue providing intensive training to inspectors and raise awareness of the situation of workers in Italy, Naturland Fair and Social Department has started a partnership with NoCap Associazione.

NoCap was founded by Yvan Sagnet as an activist organization aimed at addressing human and environmental rights in Italy. NoCap thus pioneered to take public action against the "caporalato" system and to create a broad public as well as political awareness for the rights of (migrant) workers.

Yves Sagnet during a meeting with Naturland in Gräfelfing. Source: Naturland

In May 2023, Naturland invited founder and activist Yvan Sagnet to Gräfelfing to talk about building communication channels on issues related to working conditions in Italy. Joint awareness-raising measures in the training of inspectors are also planned. In the long term, the possibility of launching a joint NoCap - Naturland Fair product is also being considered.

This text is a translation. No guarantee can be given for the correctness.

Author

Thomas Beutler is a social responsibility expert at Naturland. He deals with working conditions in the agricultural sector worldwide and is responsible for implementing Naturland's social standards and establishing cooperations with ILO country offices and other relevant stakeholders.