LATEST SHAME DECREE ON ASBESTOS
by PAOLA BARBAN
On 5 December 2023, Ministers Giorgetti (Economy and Finance) and Calderone (Labour and Social Policies) signed the Interministerial Decree on the Fund for Asbestos Victims.
Two issues immediately jump out at you.
The measure is intended for “workers of public investee companies who have contracted asbestos-related diseases during their work at shipyards“. Why not those who have worked in private companies? And why only in shipyards and not in other sectors where asbestos was used such as construction and ports?
The paragraph that has sparked the greatest controversy is the one that reads “Public investee companies declared unsuccessful by an enforceable judgment or in any case debtors in the minutes of judicial conciliation (…), having as their object the compensation of pecuniary and non-pecuniary damages, recognized in favor of workers, can also access the Fund“.
In practice, the State allocates part of the fund for asbestos victims to the same companies responsible for the disease and in many cases the death of its workers.
One of the first reactions came from regional councillor Enrico Bullian, who dedicated his degree thesis to the asbestos affair, calling the decree “a legal aberration and a political scandal, a sensational short circuit”.
The problem arrived in January 2024 in the City Council in Monfalcone, in particularly heated tones. The then Mayor Annamaria Cisint has always been very sensitive to the asbestos problem, also because mesothelioma took her father away from her and because she lives in the Panzano district, where the construction site is located. The measure signed by his party colleague Giorgetti evidently did not like it. Cisint appealed to the then president of the State-Regions Conference Fedriga to extend support to all other production sectors affected by the problem: ports, railways, construction, etc.
Through the vice president of the Senate Centinaio, he also presented an amendment to try to correct what has been renamed the “shame decree”, to be included in the so-called “Milleproroghe 2025”. But it went badly, the amendment was judged inadmissible, like a similar one from the center-left.
Cisint promises that there will be other occasions, but in a recent political event Councillor Bullian commented on the rejection of the amendment with the words of Fabrizio De Andrè’s Don Raffaè: “the State that does, is dismayed, indignant, commits itself then throws in the towel with great dignity“.