This 1 will be an even more worrying May 2020st than in XNUMX. In past years we have often wondered about the meaning of this day which has taken on different connotations throughout the history of the Republic. Of real celebration for the achievements achieved, when we looked at the first important steps forward in workers' rights - next 20 May we will celebrate 50 years of the workers' statute – but also May Days of battle, anger or in defense of democracy.
Today instead the emptiness of the squares and the anxiety for the future, which the health crisis has accelerated invites us to a more intimate and profound reflection on the meaning of work, what is missing and what will be. The factories have now reopened almost all. Monday 4 will be the turn of the last ones. We will have to see the state of health of the real economy halfway. Each company will have a new picture of the market it has left and of the one to be reconquered, and perhaps of the one lost forever. We must not use the terms of war, but the economic data risk being similar to those of a war economy. Drama that needs a new normality, because it's the old one that caused this disaster.
La health crisis has caused thousands of deaths. The official calculations, which will inevitably tend to grow, speak today of over 27.000 official deaths in our country. A frightening cost in terms of human lives. On this day it is right to remember all these dead people, together with the many who have continued to work these days and have lost their lives in fulfilling their duty. On this day it is right to remember them, because the risk is that we get used to the death bulletin and the coldness of the numbers, such as the continuous many deaths at work or the macabre count of those who ended up at the bottom of the sea together with their legitimate hope for a better and more dignified life.
Behind these numbers are people, lives, families and stories dramatically marked forever. But the virus has hit us, and is hitting us heavily also on the economic and work side, economic and employment data are dramatic. 2020 will close with -9% of GDP, at best, at -12% at worst. There is a drop in hours worked, with over 7.3 million employees on layoffs, to which are added another 4.3 million self-employed workers and employment estimates for next year in Italy alone tell us that we will have at least half a million fewer jobs. The automotive market alone, which accounts for more than 10% of the national GDP, recorded a drop in registrations of -85% in March.
Looking at these numbers there is little to celebrate then. The crisis triggered by the coronavirus has triggered a global shock that will have very serious repercussions in the coming months. Mitigating its effects will not be easy especially since the emergency has fallen on a production system such as the Italian one weak and with productivity levels among the lowest in Europe. But we must look to the future with hope, this crisis must make us reflect on what we are experiencing in these strange days and make us look up to see the stars again.
In fact, Covid-19 in its drama can represent a great opportunity, a powerful accelerator of positive changes in this delicate historical phase that we are going through and that it sees us facing three epochal transformations: technological, environmental and demographic. Work is the epicenter of these great revolutions, the hub for its spiritual, ethical and social dimension, rather than economic or technological. A capital asset, work, which in addition to being part of our identity, also has an ineluctable community dimension.
Well, Covid-19 is accelerating changes that until a few months ago were considered necessary only in conferences, such as the I work in smart working which obviously found many companies unprepared who today are moving out of necessity in that direction. But also that idea that we translated into the 2016 metalworkers' contract of the subjective right to training, which represents the true right to the future, together with safety. That safety that today is being translated into new procedures, new spaces and work environments, where design and layout contribute to making the workplace safer and more sustainable.
A new dimension of the space-time relationship of the work that opens up unprecedented opportunities, also in imagining a revitalization of living on our peninsula in which many semi-abandoned villages, but rich in history and where the quality of life is certainly better, can once again become places to live thanks to the network and digital infrastructures that they give us the opportunity not to physically go to the office or factory every day.
Now however, the fundamental thing will be to start again, calmly, well and safely. Already on April 27, many companies restarted, also thanks to the safety protocols that we have prepared together with the companies following the indications of the protocol of 14 March, then renewed on 24 April, signed by CGIL, CISL, UIL, the government and employers' associations.
It will be essential not to leave anyone behind and a strong contribution from Europe, for families and businesses, will then be decisive to simplify our country's bureaucracy also through digital technology. A twentieth-century bureaucracy, which, as we are witnessing in recent weeks, is often an element of brake and stalemate in decisions and in the ability to respond to the rapid changes taking place. Changes that require speed, lightness, coherence, simplicity, multiplicity, as Calvino hoped in American lessons.
This is why it is ever more urgent and necessary rethinking a new relationship between public and private that puts participation and sustainability at the centre. The country will emerge well and changed for the better if we take the path of the future with structural reforms that modernize the state, tackling our country's large deficits with determination: infrastructure, ultra-broadband and 5G, scarce innovation, access to credit (and at this moment credit lines guaranteed by the state), training, certainty of the law and not of litigation. It will take a collective effort of creativity to write on a blank sheet of paper what the future work will be, taking the cues from this crisis to come out stronger, all together.
This pandemic, it can represent a great accelerator of innovation, an opportunity to rethink our ways of working and living more attentive and balanced towards people and the planet. Socially and environmentally sustainable work such as the one that for 5 years now together with NexT, the association of the economist Leonardo Becchetti, we have been rewarding in the prologue to Labor Day, through the tool of ethical cashmob and voting with the wallet, which also this year, in a different way, through the use of the web we wanted to reward and celebrate April 29th.
The moment we are experiencing is dark and hard, the virus crown is the "black swan" the unpredictable event that changes the rules of the game, and like all crises also this cursed pandemic is bringing out contradictions and delays that we will have to transform into great opportunities to finally get out of the 900s and take the road to a new era that has a new awareness of the planet's fragility and that manages to heal the many distortions and inequalities between the North and South of the planet, because if one what this virus is teaching us is that we are all one big family.
* Meanwhile it is born Venture Thinking, the first ecosystem accelerator which combines different experiences and skills with the aim of overcoming the economic crisis through collaboration, solidarity and sharing. An innovative project that brings together philosophers and companies and which is presented Saturday 2 May, with a great streaming event from hour to hour 15 20 on the site.
