News

This article presents the 2011 report carried out by the Filcams- CGIL Observatory on economic, structural and employment trends in the commerce, tourism and tenders sectors.



The objective of this Observatory is to provide sector trade unionists with a precise and updated tool to gain a better knowledge of these sectors, of the changes that are happening within them and the repercussions on those which are employed.

The survey has been conducted annually with updates every six months, identifying a focus on a specific issue considered to be a priority for the three sectors.



The Observatory is supported by a Scientific-Technical committee: four researchers (three experts of the specific sectors) and unionists.



The Observatory has highlighted during 2011 the following issues that have been characteristic of the sector in the examined period.



The commerce report synthetically underlines a historic moment of the economic crisis: in 2009, the amount of directly employed workers overcame that of independent ones.

Since the year 2000, the total amount of people employed has decreased, with a slight increase only in the amount of workers not employed full time.



Organized commerce is less capable of absorbing the workers coming from the non specialized commerce, and when it does it is only on a numerical basis; those employed in organized distribution are still many, but this is happening at the expense of full time workers and in favour of precarious forms of employment.



Intermediate commercial units are decreasing, in favour of the great distribution and of marginal units, while the typologies that are resisting are the last generation commercial centres, since those depending on hypermarkets have decayed, due to the hypermarkets crisis.



The actions which have been put in place to survive by the new commercial typologies, at the expense of big surfaces, and in particular the maintenance of the amount of people employed in organized distribution, causing an increasing change in the internal structure of the employment, force the unions to face and think in a new way issues such as work organization, knowing that the innovative forms of organization are growing stronger; and employment is always more part time and precarious.



The liberalization of opening hours will be the object of a future survey.



In the tourism sector report, the most intriguing element is the constant growth, and the fact that wars, terrorist attacks and the crisis have only temporarily slowed down this trend, that came back stronger than before.

Many people, after 9/11/2001, stated that nothing would have been the same again, and this would have been true for tourism as well. We were wrong: slowly, travels have increased once again, and we have seen an abrupt slowdown due to the current crisis, with effects that are worst of those causes by the 11^th of September.



During a period of crisis, we may witness a repositioning of the market: nowadays Italy, if compared to Europe, has lost the trait of being “the destination”, it’s just one of the many, while the BRIC countries are increasing but do not compensate the decrease of Europe. The offer seems to adapt to this new situation.



The crisis is still present, and is causing transformations: the stability of employment given to the nature of employment in the tourism sector, not keen towards “technological revolutions”, is faced by the dark side of the sector, irregular work.



Together with the positive factors in terms of extension of quality, quantity and localization of the tourism offer, we may find a constant and creeping process of outsourcing in the reorganization of the hospitality offer, which contradicts the distinctive trait of working in the tourism sector, a professionalism linked to the relation between employment and those who benefit of this work.

These processes will be considered productive in a short time due to a decrease of costs, but if they will establish themselves strongly, they will be the weak point of our flaunted capacity to offer tourism services.



The ability to bargain new contracts, and through this to defend working conditions and rights, is also dependant on the ability to face adequately the current process, that will hardly stop.



In relation to the tender sector, the report represents a first attempt to observe homogenously the services tenders linked to the cleaning industry, in the industrial and public sector (both as externalized workers and as original), catering services and services for artistic activities, which have recently been included in the bargaining perimeter of Filcams, due to the twofold effect of outsourcing of the services by the public and the transformation in multiservice of old cleaning companies and property services companies.

In addition, the concentration process of productive activities in the services sector have lead to the establishment of “Global Service”, that includes all these activities (including private security) and that will have always more as a common dominant element that of working through tenders, with the relevant distinction between tenders operated through defined rules, such as public procurement, and private tendering, operated through agreements between privates.