Twenty years have passed since Marco Biagi he was awaited at the house by a brigadier commando e shot dead, while a few meters away the family was waiting for him for dinner.
The memory of Marco Biagi
Marco and I had been friends for a long time. In all these years I have done my part to honor his memory, defend his work, collaborate with his students, fight the hatred that had armed the murderous hand, cultivate relationships with his family.
In the early years it was a tough battle because Biagi was blamed for those changes in the labor market for which – as a lawyer – he tried to identify rules and rights, clashing with the carelessness (unfortunately still fierce in the subcultures of the political and trade union left to which the more recent populisms have been added) of those who claimed to bring back, with bans, the new figure of workers within the old schemes. But, after twenty years, we are still here talking about Marco Biagthe. And we do it with people who, if they were already born when Marco was killed, were certainly not aware of what had happened in Via Valdonica. Why Biagi's memory is still a solid monument sheltered not only from cancel culture, but also from the wear and tear of time, from oblivion.
From the Foundation to the ADAPT Study Centre
Of course, this memory is cultivated with commitment and dedication by Foundation dedicated to him, in Modena, of which his wife Marina is a tireless promoter, from the ADAPT Study Center, founded by Marco, but implemented by Michele Tiraboschi, which has become a point of reference for anyone involved in work. A Center for in-depth analysis, training, documentation, collections and periodic surveys in the field of industrial relations.
A Center that has become a gym for young talents. Just look at the weekly Bulletin that is published online to find young people who have just graduated or who have completed a research doctorate, who try their hand at notes and articles on employment and industrial relations issues. Some of them follow real research paths on lines (such as collective bargaining) of legal interest or pertaining to the history of industrial relations, in the belief that culture and knowledge must be as widespread as possible in honest and accessible terms.
Marco Biagi and the youngsters
How is it possible, I have asked myself many times, that the thought and action of a labor law professor at a provincial university can still arouse so much interest, indeed so much curiosity?
There are only two people left in the world of ADAPT who have had the opportunity to know him and work with Biagi: Michele Tiraboschi and Silvia Spattini. The others came later and continue to add year after year, because ADAPT is on the hunt for young talent.
I must admit that an answer - certainly partial - to my questions came to me by attending, via streaming, the commemoration held last 16th at the CNEL in the presence, among others, of the president Tiziano Treu (with whom Marco had collaborated on various occasions) and by Minister Andrea Orlando. In a brief concluding speech, the current president of ADAPT Emmanuele Massagli was able to grasp precisely this aspect: Biagi and the youngsters.
Students, graduates, doctoral students - according to Massagli - warn in the figure of Biagi the fire of a passion for what is deemed right that does not back down even when one fears for one's life. It's not heroism (Biagi lived the last months of his life as a daily nightmare and knocked on every door to obtain a minimum of the protection that was denied to him); it is a sense of duty.
In a society where only rights have a place even when they are lazy expectations and arrogant claims, those who "in life stand up in defense of Thermopylae", even if they know that in the end "the Medes will end up passing", they deserve the recognition due to the Masters.
