On the shelves of English supermarkets you will find Italian tomato products. They are essential ingredients, found on the dinner plates of many but few people know about worker exploitation behind the tomato production.
African migrants toil up to 14 hours, gathering tomatoes in Basilicata, a region of southern Italy. They stay in filthy farmhouses without restrooms, potable water and electricity. They are underpaid - 20 euros per day - below the minimum wage.
They have been considered as “slaves of modern age” by Amnesty International which focused its attention on human exploitation in the food sector.
Behind tomato production there is a severe abuse – caporalato system, so called in Italian jargon. Between the boss and workers there is a gang master who compels migrants to work without contracts and low pay.
During tomato production almost 1500 workers are employed, but after that they go on the tour of exploitation in different places - from Rosarno with oranges, to Cassibile with potatoes.
One worker, Salif, 30, from Burkina Faso says: “My colleagues and me are forced to accept these bad working conditions because we have no choice.
“We come from war countries where there is absolute poverty. We escape from hell, but here there isn’t paradise.”
Salif talks about his working-day: “We usually wake up at five o’clock and wait our gangmaster (caporale) to go in the fields by van. We pick tomatoes by hand and put them on crate which can weigh up to 350 kg when full.”
They are paid to piecework: 3.50 euros per crate. Obviously, migrants try to work quickly to earn more money.
In a statement, another picker, Daniel, 33, from Ghana adds: “It’s absolutely not easy to work more than 10 hours with high temperatures. During summer time there could be up to 40 degrees. Unfortunately, our gangmasters don’t give us water or other fresh beverages.”
Another negative aspect is the lack of sanitary assistance: “Most workers don’t have regular contracts therefore, if they have some accidents at work, gangmasters don’t want call ambulance or police.”
Although there are many drawbacks, these migrants work in harsh conditions because they want to help their families.
“I have a big family in Burkina Faso, six brothers and two sisters. I usually send money to fund them because they live in extreme poverty,” reveals Salif.
Daniel also endures many problems in tomato production to give money to his wife and his children. “When I’m very exhausted, I think about poverty in which my family lives, and I keep on working every day with responsibility.
“For this reason we don’t want risk losing our job and accept extortions from our gangmasters and bosses,” he admits.
To support African migrants there are some associations – Caritas and Osservatorio Migranti – which cooperate to help them. They provide food, bedspreads, drinks and medicines.
There are also Trade Unions which assist these workers to make their rights respect at work.
A spokesperson from Cisl Unions, Rocco Pierro says: “We carried out many statistics to analyse their working conditions.
“We found out bosses usually record one or two work-days to migrants on a whole period of tomato production. In this way they can’t receive unemployment benefits.”
There has been an attempt to stop this situation, providing diaries to migrants in order to write down their work-days.
Obviously, gang masters are not grateful for these diaries. “They told us not to use them otherwise we could be dismissed,” says Daniel.
A representative from Osservatorio Migranti, Gervasio Ungolo says: “We have tried to mediate with bosses so that they provided documents on which declare work-days. But also in this case work-days did not square with reality.”
He explains caporalato system is well planned and therefore it’s not easy to find an effective solution.
Ungolo highlights another aspect: “Behind caporalato system there is a hierarchy which starts with migrants at the lowest level, after there are gang masters and in the highest positions there are farm owners.
“But in the tomato production, after manual harvest the processing is necessary to sell many products and export them around world, above all, to UK.”
Many Italian companies – which export abroad - are adhering to the “ethical code” so that migrants’ right are obeyed.
But Pierro says: “This ethical code doesn’t stop the abuse towards migrants. We believe it’s necessary to check that work-days are recorded and working conditions are obeyed.
“We want these workers are considered like human beings and not animals.”
In tomato production, the political sphere tried to negotiate a settlement between farm owners and migrants. In Basilicata and Puglia, many meetings have been carried out to talk about caporalato system.
During these conferences there weren’t any representatives from migrants.
“It’s not right that workers are not included in planning measures to solve this situation,” says Salif.
Daniel expresses his anger: “Probably, there are many interests behind tomato production. For this reason Institutions abandoned us.”
To sensitise public opinion about caporalato system, in the South of Italy and in the United Kingdom, many events have been arranged by Trade Unions and by organisations which support African migrants.
Last winter in Boreano, a town located in Basilicata, there was a meeting to announce a project for migrants.
Gervasio Ungolo (Osservatorio Migranti) says: “A van and 100 bikes have been bought to transport migrants at work so that gang masters are not essential to pick them from farmhouse.”
In London on 12th November, there was the second edition of Out of the Ghetto which is organised by a group of volunteers.
They built a school in Boreano to teach them Italian language on three levels, basic, intermediate and advanced.
This plan is useful, not only for the knowledge of Italian language, but to create a new mentality among workers so that they could struggle to obtained their rights.
A spokesperson from Out of the Ghetto, Rossana Caglia explains: “We can tell the city of London is interested to this situation. Many people ask us many information about gang masters. They want to know many more details and figures about this topic.
“There are also English people who move in Italy to help some organisation to stop this caporalato system.”
A chef, Roseanne, considers this abuse a scandal: “It’s not acceptable to sell tomatoes products in main chains like Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Morrison’s, which declare to respect sustainability and fair trade. Obviously, these criteria are not valid.
“When I see red and shining tomatoes, reading the label ‘Made in Italy’, I think about the enchanting sun and warmth of Italy. But the journey doesn’t start where they’re originally grown either, that was the shock.”
A young researcher, Melany, asserts: “The journey often starts in another continent, and in this case Africa. To think that the cost you expect canned tomatoes to be, often comes from the exploitation of migrant workers. It makes you think of very pervasive remote slavery.”
