Today, Friday 28 November, there is a national strike by Italian journalists, called to protest against the failure to renew the national collective agreement, which expired in 2016 and has never been updated.
On November 28th, Italian journalists are on strike. We are striking because our employment contract expired 10 years ago and above all because we believe that journalism, a fundamental safeguard for the democratic life of the country, has not received the necessary attention from the Fieg publishers: many cuts and little investment, despite the millionaire public subsidies.
In over 10 years, the reduction in editorial staff and the reduction in journalists’ salaries through states of crisis, dismissals, early retirements and contract blocking have had very strong repercussions on pluralism and the right of citizens to be informed. In these 10 years, the number of employed journalists has decreased, but the exploitation of collaborators and temporary workers has increased dramatically: paid a few euros per story, without any rights and without a future.
In these 10 years the purchasing power of journalists’ salaries has been eroded by inflation, by almost 20% according to Istat: this is why we ask for an increase that is in line with those of other collective agreements. The publishers have proposed a negligible increase and asked to further cut the salaries of new hires, thus aggravating the generational divide in the editorial offices in an inadmissible way.
Let’s not make it a corporate battle. We think that truly free and plural information, which is under democratic control, needs authoritative and independent journalists who are not economically blackmailable.
We ask for a new contract, which protects rights and which looks at information with new digital professions, regulating the use of Artificial Intelligence and obtaining fair compensation for the contents transferred to the web.
We want to push publishers to look to the future without continuing to cut into the present. If Fieg really cares about professional information, it must invest in technology and young people who cannot become low-cost intellectual laborers.
It owes it to us journalists, but above all it owes it to the citizens protected by Article 21 of the Constitution.
National Federation of the Italian Press
Contrary to what the union claims, over the last decade publishers have made huge investments to protect both the quality and freedom of information and journalistic employment.
In a dramatic context in which companies have recorded a halving of revenues, it has been possible to avoid layoffs through the use of sector regulations and this has always happened with the consent of the union.
In recent years, the business model of traditional media has had to compete with unfair competition from Over The Tops (such as Google, Meta and others) who economically exploit editorial content by retaining the majority of advertising revenues and data: this has weakened the financial sustainability of publishing companies which, however, have reacted with responsibility and rigour, taking up the challenge of innovation without drastic interventions.
Companies also want a new contract.
To face the current scenario, it is necessary to be able to promote innovation, seize the opportunities offered by technological evolution and the digital information system, with a cost system compatible with the new dynamics of the sector and the national employment contract should represent a competitiveness tool.
However, in these months of negotiations we found ourselves faced with a union that did not want to address either the issue of the overall modernization of an antiquated contract (which still provides for the payment of former holidays suppressed by a 1977 law) nor the introduction of more flexible rules to encourage the hiring of young people, preferring instead to limit themselves to exclusively economic requests aimed at recovering the alleged wage loss recorded in the last decade.
Although in the aforementioned period the recovery of inflation was guaranteed by the system of percentage increases envisaged by the contract, the Publishers offered an important economic recognition, higher than that granted in the last renewal of 2014, despite the absence of any type of contractual innovation.
With reference to collaborators, it should be remembered that companies act in full compliance with the compensation provided for in the 2014 agreement signed with the union.
In this regard, the FIEG has constantly expressed its desire to improve the current contractual agreement but, also on this issue, an unavailability for discussion had to be noted.
As for artificial intelligence, it is reiterated that the solution cannot lie in the claim to introduce restrictive rules of use, destined to be quickly overcome, but rather an ethical approach is needed on the part of companies with the possibility of adopting Codes that protect both the journalistic profession and the readers.
To face the challenges of the immediate future, publishers are ready to do their part, continuing to invest in products and in enhancing professionalism and hope that the comparison can take place in more realistic terms and without prejudice.
Italian Federation of Newspaper Publishers
