.Dust

I have been a reader of the Ital­ian news­pa­per Cor­riere della Sera, online and offline, for a very long time. I always thought it had some rep­u­ta­tion and an abil­ity to report news in a quite bal­anced way. My per­sonal view, obviously.

Yes­ter­day night I come across this dicus­sion on Friend­Feed. (Sorry, it’s in Italian)

Here’s what hap­pened. Paola Caruso has been work­ing at Cor­riere della Sera for seven years with sev­eral temp con­tracts. Hon­estly temp con­tract is not the right word to describe the type of con­tract Paola has been work­ing with. It is quite dif­fi­cult to explain to a non Ital­ian reader which is the sense and scope, if any, of these kind of contracts.

Any­way, back to the story.

After sever years of hard work one of her col­leagues resigns and she finally thinks it’s her turn to land the job. Guess what. It did not hap­pen. The job was assigned to a fresh school of jour­nal­ism grad­u­ate. If you live in Italy you will quickly guess why: friend of a friend, pos­si­bly a very impor­tant friend.

For this rea­son Paola decided to vol­un­tary stop of eat­ing and drinking.

Cor­riere della Sera is a pri­vate com­pany and their can hire who they want. No dis­cus­sion on this, even if, at least inter­nally, they should jus­tify those choices with some­one who has been work­ing seven years with, as I read, good performances.

The most absurd thing here is that the com­pany seems to have used a temp con­tract for seven years to avoid the hir­ing of a full time employee. This is where we should inves­ti­gate and ask for clar­i­fi­ca­tions to Cor­riere della Sera.

This is a very com­mon issue in Italy and we can’t stand with this anymore.

For the time being I will per­son­ally stop buy­ing the news­pa­per and I have just deleted the appli­ca­tion from my iPhone and my iPad. I will also stop read­ing the online ver­sion. Not much, I agree.

Dear Mr Fer­ruc­cio de Bor­toli, edi­tor in chief, would you please explain us what’s hap­pen­ing and why?

[Update]

I have received some per­sonal mes­sages on this with some crit­i­cism on what I wrote and I think they deserve an answer.

It’s quite clear that we do not know what cri­te­ria Cor­riere della Sera’s has used in hir­ing some­one in place of Paola. The fact that she has not been hired in the first place does not auto­mat­i­cally mean that some­one else has been pushed to that posi­tion. That’s not the point I was mak­ing here.

The main point is that in Italy we have a labour law that is killing this coun­try or, to be less dra­matic, not applied as it was sup­posed to be.

This is why I think we can­not accept what’s hap­pened to Paola, her being just one of those 20% of the work­ing force in Italy in the very same situation.

And this is why I would like to read an expla­na­tion from Cor­riere della Sera.

Related posts:

1. Inno­va­tion is everywhere
2. Inno­va­tion in politics
3. Book­marks for Novem­ber 3^rd
4. The Press And Com­mu­ni­cat­ing Innovation