On the occasion of Labor Day, the general secretaries of CGIL, CISL and UIL, Susanna Camusso, Annamaria Furlan and Carmelo Barbagallo meet in Portella della Ginestra, in the province of Palermo. It is here that, 70 years ago, a helpless crowd of workers, women, children and the elderly were targeted by machine gun bursts from Salvatore Giuliano's gang: eleven people killed, including two children, plus around sixty wounded.
The need for work for redemption from poverty, is the message that comes from the unions with the choice to celebrate Workers' Day right in Portella, as valid today as it was then, especially in a land where unemployment levels are an emergency.
“The watchword of this May Day is work. Work as a necessity, work that is missing, quality work, work as a response to young people, who otherwise are forced to pack their bags - recalled Camusso - Portella della Ginestra was a massacre against the peasant movement, and it was the reaction of a social block who did not want land distribution and land reform. So not just a theme of political alignments, but a great economic theme of what was the prospect of the development of Sicily and its possibilities. If you don't read in the key of the interests that move and coalesce with respect to the collusion, or use of the mafia, and organized crime, you risk talking a lot, but concretely not changing anything ".
"Work is the DNA of the values of a community and of the person, because it also embodies the concepts of solidarity, justice, equality and growth of a country - Furlan declared to Avvenire - Certainly, the most topical emergency today it is precisely the work: the lack of it, the work that is lost, that one is afraid of losing or that one cannot find. Growth, development and good work must be restored to the center of the country”.
"We must continue to fight to always affirm the values of legality, against all mafias and against all abuses - stated Barbagallo - In this sense, even the world of work has represented a barrier to social injustices, but work today is not rightly and adequately valued. Work today is not rightly and adequately valued. Work is the architrave on which our Constitution is founded and in which our roots sink. We must recover the deep meaning of that value to aim for the development of the whole country. For this hope to turn into reality, we need to start from our South".
