March 19th, twenty-three years ago Marco Biagi he was returning from Modena, where he taught in the Faculty of Economics, when he came murdered under the house, in via Valdonica, a stone's throw from the Two Towers. The wife and children heard the sound of gunshots and understood what had happened. March 19 of that year fell on a Wednesday. The previous Friday, an authoritative weekly published a news item attributed to the services in which it was stated that the new BR (who years before had killed Massimo D'Antona) were preparing other actions against not political figures, but expert collaborators who were entrusted with drafting tasks. It was the profile of Marco Biagi; but the terrorists anticipated the meeting of the commission charged with reintroducing or not that public safety protection that had been unexpectedly taken away from him, leaving the professor defenseless against his assassins.
The bureaucracy that betrayed Marco Biagi
That bureaucratic obstinacy was all the more deplorable when, during the investigation, it emerged that the Red Brigades commando would not have acted if there had been the risk of a firefight. When he was killed, Biagi and I had known each other for thirty years. Over time, our friendship had consolidated; we met with each other's families, while on a professional level, due to the roles and skills each of us had carried out in those years, our relationships were intense, integrated and complementary. After that tragic event, I found a mission in life: to allow that Marco Biag's ideasI had a say in the debate legitimacy that it had been to him denied from the “flat-earthers” of labor law, tied to an ossified, but considered immutable, concept of permanent employment relationship and protected by Article 18 of the Statute. Biagi dared to cross that border beyond which it was written “hic sunt leones”.
The silence and distortion after his death
In the short time he had left to live, Biagi was treated as Elsa Fornero was treated years later on the subject of pensions: the White Paper was simply “muddy”. Just as the pension reform of 2011 was accused of penalising workers in their right to retirement. Of course, Biagi’s sacrifice silenced many critics. Indeed, the attempt to separate Marco from his work began, as if he had been exploited by the perfidious centre-right government. This thesis was based on a fact: the law Biagi was approved after his killing and, above all, the legislative decrees in application of the delegation were passed in later times with the contribution of Michele Tiraboschi. But in the ulterior motives of too many political and trade union leaders and legal practitioners, Biagi remains the inventor of precariousness, as if the Moon existed only because someone points to it.
Marco was convinced that the flexibility of employment relationships was an unavoidable need and that the task of the jurist was to define some rules a worker protection. “It is necessary to provide – it was written in the White Paper – new contractual typologies that have the function of “cleaning up” the labor market from the improper use of some instruments that exist today, in an evasive or fraudulent function of the legislation established to protect subordinate work, and that, at the same time, take into account the changed production and organizational needs”. Bringing a pertinent rule where there was none, for Biagi, was not only the “profession” of the jurist, but also the only way to protect the worker.
Marco Biagi's Thought and the Fight Against Undeclared Work
In an article published on Il Sole 24 Ore of November 16, 2001, Marco wrote: “If you really want to start a fight without quarter to irregular work, we need to have all the tools suitable for the purpose: to flush out the die-hards of black labor, all weapons are needed, even the most sophisticated ones... Are protections being reduced? - he wondered - Perhaps for the employed, but not for those looking for work". Marco followed this line of thought since his contribution, in February 2000, to the drafting of the so-called Patto per Milano, which was nothing other than an attempt to include, by assigning them to public utility jobs, the "last", the "damned of the earth", unemployed immigrants: a model that was imitated in many other cities in the following years. Since that agreement had essentially inclusive objectives for the marginalized sectors of the labor market, it presupposed entry wage levels lower than the contractual minimums: which offended the "sacred principles". That was the circumstance in which the break with the Cgil matured (which did not want to adhere to the agreement).
The commitment and threats he faced until his death
With regard to the professor's work, the manifestations of a normal dissent on the merits, which was legitimate and useful, were surrounded by a contextual climate of unpleasant ethical disapprovals which resulted in a substantial accusation of treason. An accusation that can only be borne if one possesses great moral strength, because the left is implacable with those who evade the fundamental rule of belonging. In fact, the left maintains a moral distinction with respect to its adversaries, as a result of which those who abandon the field are not those who have simply changed their opinion, but are apostates from the true faith, while those who land on the left are redeemed.
In the last months of his life, the professor committed himself to defending in many occasions of harsh and partisan debate those ideas and proposals that were collected in the texts he had prepared. He did so in a context of insecurity staff that worried him, but he didn't was distracting from his commitment . In one of the many letters to the authorities called (in vain) to provide for his safety, Biagi assured the Minister of Labour, Robert Maroni, which, despite the recurring threats, did not intend to “desist from my collaborative activity with you and the Ministry”.
Marco Biagi's legacy
The task of the jurist, according to Biagi, was to identify regulated and regular forms for social inclusion, in the awareness that the claim to transform anyone into a stable worker turns beyond intentions into a preclusion, because to become employed one must first of all be employable. “Regulated” flexibility constituted the central nucleus of his thought.
For twenty-three years, the anniversary of the killing has been remembered with many initiatives by the School he founded, by the foundation named after him, by the institutions of Bologna, by friends and local associations.
I often wonder what my friend would have done in these 23 years. Now he would be retired enjoying his two granddaughters, daughters of Francesco, the eldest of his children. Then he would be very proud of the successes of his Bologna, the team of his heart. I hope that where he is he can witness what happens to his loved ones and the work of his students. And that he does not get too sad about the four referendums of the Cgil.
