Outsourcing and workers’ resistance practices in Venice’s hotel industry: The role of migrants employed by cooperatives

Abstract

Based on qualitative data collected for broader research on the transformation of hotel labour in Venice, Italy, this study explores how workers and unions have experienced outsourcing carried out through cooperatives of convenience (COC). The authors examine the impact of outsourcing on work processes, highlighting its link with growing standardisation and increased managerial control. In contrast to studies that underscore the critical effects of outsourcing on solidarity and the employment system, this article stresses that, even in a sector characterised by union weakness, workers, especially unorganised migrants, develop resistance strategies within the workplace as well as paths of mobilisation.

Subcontracted racial capitalism: the interrelationship of race and production in meat processing plants

“…Departing from the analysis of the empirical data concerning the meat industry in Northern Italy, we suggest that racialisation has facilitated the introduction of subcontracting, as jobs characterised by the worst working conditions have been attributed to racialised subjects through COCs. This process reinforces the segmentation of the labour market and hinders forms of solidarity (Iannuzzi and Sacchetto, 2020). In slaughterhouses, in particular, dirty, physically and emotionally demanding tasks have been progressively attributed first to internal and later on to international migrant workers, thus leading to the coexistence of processes of racialisation and de-racialisation (Gans, 2017).…”

“…Since the 1990s, the slaughtering sector in the European Union has undergone significant transformations in terms of productive structures, recruitment methods and workforce composition, with a substantial increase in atypical and outsourced work and frequent recourse to subcontracting and posted workers (Wagner and Refslund, 2016;Lever and Milbourne, 2017;Birke and Bluhm, 2020). In Italy, subcontracting through cooperatives of convenience (COCs) (Iannuzzi and Sacchetto, 2020), where a large part of the workforce is composed of migrants, has been used as an instrument to increase flexibility and downsize labour costs, favouring a process that we could define as 'in-house delocalization' (Ceccagno, 2017). In COCs, workers are asked to become members of cooperatives or are hired as employees.…”

“…The second relevant transformation concerned the progressive outsourcing of segments of the production to COCs operating within the same plant, often illegally intermediating labour (Dorigatti, 2018;Iannuzzi and Sacchetto, 2020). At Beef Group and Chicken Group, these processes were initially hailed positively by Italian workers as they involved avoiding the most unpleasant tasks and shifts (for example, cleaning, logistics or night shifts), which were outsourced to subcontractors: 'Very often, the heaviest, dirtiest, and physically demanding activities were contracted out or decentralised, therefore, the workers of those plants who assisted in the outsourcing of logistics, cleaning, evisceration not complaint about … I was not working in the evisceration; I was doing a different activity at that time -[raises his voice] but loading trucks in the summer with 30 degrees, or in the winter when it is cold, it is a tiring job, that if someone can avoid it, they would try to avoid it.…”

Employment protection regimes and dismissal of members in worker cooperatives

“…On the negative side, reports of exploitation, abuse of power and poor working conditions are not alien to WCs too and can indicate the need to increase the protection of workers' rights and better regulation of managerial discretionary decisions also in WCs (Iannuzzi & Sacchetto, 2020).…”

“…Employment contracts and employment relationships in cooperatives are similar in many respects to those found in IOFs. In the most extreme cases, workers who are members of a cooperative can enjoy less employment protection than employees in IOFs, since employees benefit from trade union protection clauses, while membership rights in worker cooperatives are often interpreted as pertaining to selfemployment (Iannuzzi and Sacchetto, 2020). This interpretation supports the possibility for cooperatives to dismiss members at their discretion and risks undermining the distinctive cooperative identity which has to do with the protection of workers' rights and the satisfaction of their needs.…”