https://www.corrieredellacalabria.i...ve-avere-il-nulla-osta-della-ndrangheta/

the system
The labor racket in Calabria, the role of gangmasters and recruitment. «You must have the authorization of the 'ndrangheta»
In the busiest periods, the coming and going of minibuses driven by gangmasters. The threats to accept wages. To move, the "special permits"
Published: 10/12/2024 – 19:01

ROME Potential workers are often recruited outside reception centers, crammed onto buses and taken to the fields to work full days at starvation wages. In Calabria, the highest concentration of agricultural workers is on the three plains: Sibari, Sant'Eufemia and Gioia Tauro . The task of carrying out all aspects relating to the management of employment relationships is delegated to the "caporali", and - as often emerges from investigations and testimonies - behind the system set up to exploit those who have no other choice to earn a living, there are criminal organizations. "All labor exploitation schemes must have the go-ahead from the 'ndrangheta". The evidence emerges from the testimonies collected in the Agromafia and gangmastering report by the Placido Rizzotto Observatory of Flai Cgi l, now in its seventh edition and presented in Rome at the Frentani Congress Center.
The recruitment
The study specifically examined the Crotone area where it is estimated that between 11,000 and 12,000 people are employed in a non-standard way (black or grey work). And precisely in Crotone, where the Cara di Sant'Anna in Isola di Capo Rizzuto is located – as described in the Report – there are episodes of recruitment of women and men who are transported to the workplace. « In many cases – we read in the document – ??recruitment, both by gangmasters and owners, takes place in CAS and other reception facilities . Every morning in front of the Cara di Sant'Anna, in the municipality of Isola di Capo Rizzuto, long lines of guests form waiting for the gangmasters to arrive for a daily contract. Those who do not manage to obtain it are forced to return to the center”. A phenomenon that has also been the subject of complaints to the Public Prosecutor's Office by the local Flai-Cgil. «In the context of small city centers, the recruitment methods recall the historic market square. Workers are picked up in the squares in the early hours of the morning by foreign gangmasters driving minibuses and taken to their companies. During periods of greatest work intensity, the Ionian coast is a coming and going of minibuses driven by gangmasters .

The role of the corporals
The “system” works thanks to the intermediation of the gangmasters who are entrusted with the task of managing all aspects of employment relationships: in many cases, companies do not communicate directly with workers, but it is the gangmasters who give orders and directives through the tool of WhatsApp groups. “The gangmasters always deliver the contracts and wages,” the Report explains, “which are usually divided into two parts. The first is transferred by the company via bank transfer to satisfy the payment traceability criteria and corresponds to the wages for the working days that are declared to INPS, while the second, which corresponds to the wages for the undeclared part of the work, is paid under the table, through the gangmaster, who usually withholds a portion in a fairly discretionary manner, also thanks to the blackmail power that comes from the ability to choose who to make work and who not.”
From the investigations conducted between 2018 and 2021 , which led to the arrest of 15 people, a central role of gangmasters emerges in forcing workers, also through the repeated use of threats, to accept wages between 15 and 30 euros for over 12 hours of work and to return part of the salary obtained by bank transfer . Gangmasters also instruct workers on how to behave in the event of checks to prevent them from providing law enforcement with elements that could prove the presence of exploitation and gangmaster practices.

The labor racket and the interests of the clans
The social and trade union actors of the territory agree that «the pervasive presence of organized crime also conditions the activities of the gangmasters, subjecting them to forms of control ». Dynamics that could be read as a «revival of the historical interest of the 'ndrangheta in the labor racket». «Calabria is, in fact, the territory of the South where the economic interest of the mafia in the business of recruiting and transporting agricultural laborers is first and most widespread. The documents of the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into the phenomenon of the «so-called gangmaster» reveal how since the Seventies the clans have assumed direct control , entrusting the role of gangmasters to very young affiliates or to disarmed bosses, or they exercise indirect control».

«All labor exploitation schemes must have the go-ahead from the 'ndrangheta»
"All the exploitation of labor must have the authorization from the 'ndrangheta", "it is not possible to let workers circulate freely, or rather organized crime does not allow it ... if for example workers from Corigliano want to come to the Marchesato Crotonese they need special permits (...) it is a form of respect for the square", say the interviewees. The expression "special permits" refers to the fact that criminal organizations demand payments . "In fact, this system, if on the one hand is functional to the mechanisms of control of the territory of the clans, also presented as a defense of the territory itself - defending the local square from gangmasters who come from other areas -, on the other hand it multiplies the speculative passages by reducing the share of wages that is paid to workers".