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January 26, 2017

The investigation looks like a journey into the world of fruit and vegetables in Italy, to investigate the responsibilities of the phenomenon of hired workers. From the north to the south of our country, through the voices of some protagonists (buyers, suppliers, producers, academics, trade unionists and entrepreneurs), we try to reconstruct the intricate system of relationships in the agri-food chain that starts from the large-scale retail trade, supermarkets where we go shopping every day, and get to the fields.

The use of low-cost foreign labor, with zero trade union rights and protections, is in fact the most evident and scandalous effect of a production system forced to modify its processes to satisfy requests, hanging in the balance between the legal and the illegal , of modern distribution.

The investigation was born from the common interest in the issue of migrants and the exploitation of work. The goal that the authors have tried to pursue has been to try to talk about hiring, but doing it from an original perspective, that is, moving the traditional focus, that of the ghettos and the exploitation of the work. Wolf Bukowski's book, "The dance of mozzarella" (ed. Alegre, 2015), which has a chapter entitled "The purchasing power of large-scale distribution", which speaks - citing articles and research - of the overwhelming power that came to help the chains of large-scale retail trade exercise in relation to the rest of the supply chain, by virtue of their economic power and concentration, compared to a group of suppliers that is often very fragmented, particularly in the south.

This excessive power often translates into requests for discounts and often vexatious contributions, which have also been the subject of attention by the Antitrust Authority. From here, a long preliminary phase began, marked by the reading and study of the reports of the Antitrust, Bank of Italy and the meeting with many associations and realities that have passed on the fruit of their fieldwork (from Netzanet-Sfruttazero to Terra! Onlus). Thus began a long journey far and wide for Italy, from Cesena to Foggia passing through the Chianti hills, but also a metaphorical journey, from one end of the supply chain to the other, from the earth to the shelves.

The moral of the story is that the crushing of prices imposed by the large-scale retail trade involves, even if not directly, a crushing of the more easily compressible cost, that is, of labor, thus placing one of the preconditions for the existence of the phenomenon of hired workers.