The Tamesis
Workers at Florence’s Uffizi Gallery waved flags and carried flares, protesting under a banner that read “Basta Vite Precarie” (“Precarious life, no movement”).
It is reported The Art NewspaperThe protest in Uffizi Square came after some of the museum’s temporary workers – assigned to security, reception, ticketing, bookstores and cloakrooms – lost their jobs due to changes in the institution’s service providers last autumn. This sparked outrage from the union Sudd Cobas, which organized the protest, writing on Instagram: “New Year’s resolution: to continue working with the workers at the Uffizi Gallery. The problem is different ideas of work, city and culture.”
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An earlier article by Sudd Cobas said, “Many citizens also joined [the workers]clearly recognizing that the struggle of these workers concerns the entire city: Florence’s tourism economy cannot continue to be based on low wages and precarious work. ”
The union also claimed that “the working conditions of permanent employees have also worsened since the last contract change. It is necessary to completely overcome the contract management model of the Florence Museum over the past two decades, which has produced a precarious workforce and created a division between ‘first-rate’ and ‘second-rate’ workers, who perform the same tasks with different contracts and wages.”
according to TanThe changes that sparked the protests related to the Uffizi leaving Opera Laboratori Fiorentini, a company that had managed ticketing, surveillance and reception services at the museum since 2006, for CoopCulture, after which staff on permanent contracts retained their jobs but other staff on temporary arrangements were not rehired. The new company told Tan The company updated its employment arrangements to “fully comply with the provisions of the tender announcement, including a list of workers whose continuity of employment must be guaranteed”. Other workers on temporary contracts “were not included in the process and therefore have no relevance to the new concession.”
Union representatives and affected workers are expected to meet soon with Florence’s deputy mayor for labor affairs. A spokesman for the Uffizi Gallery said: Tan As a state-owned institution, the museum cannot hire staff directly and must rely on tenders, adding that “for seasonal or temporary workers not retained by new concessionaires, the museum can only engage in moral suasion.”
