Italian authorities have uncovered systematic illegal labor exploitation of migrants on a farm in the Milan area. The farm and all its assets have been seized, and seven people are under investigation.
The trade union CGIL said Tuesday that 1,781 migrant workers in the agricultural sector in Italy's Puglia region had received papers as part of an amnesty out of over 15,000 with expired stay permits. The trade union asked for an extension to the deadline for the submitting of requests to be included in the amnesty, which is currently August 15.
Following fires in cramped migrant worker settlements in southwest Spain and subsequent criticism by a UN official about "deplorable conditions" there, Spanish soldiers were deployed over the weekend to build a camp for migrant strawberry pickers.
Thousands of migrant strawberry pickers from Morocco are trapped in Spain. Local groups call it a humanitarian crisis. Meanwhile, companies are trying to end their dependence on Moroccan workers.
The labor exploitation of migrant farmworkers in Piana di Gioia Tauro, in Italy's southern region of Calabria, continues amid conditions aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic, medical aid organization MEDU claims in a new report.
The coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated inequalities, highlighting the importance of often invisible frontline workers in Italy. Trade unionist Aboubakar Soumahoro, an Ivorian native who arrived in the country 20 years ago, is now calling for stronger measures in support of agricultural workers.
On June 12, a 37-year-old Senegalese migrant died in a fire in a migrant shanty town near Foggia, in the Puglia region of Italy. The fire broke out inside a shack in the migrant encampment of Borgo Mezzanone, a makeshift settlement near Foggia.
Italian authorities have arrested 52 people who allegedly belonged to an organisation that exploited hundreds of migrant farmworkers, who were called "monkeys" by their gangmaster bosses.
Italian authorities and healthcare providers have distributed 1,200 kits with facemasks, disinfectant gels and detergents to migrants living near the Italian city of Foggia.
To fill the gap of trained seasonal foreign workers to harvest its crops, Italy has opened corridors for non-EU farmworkers who have had a work contract with Italian firms for years. Carrying over 100 farmworkers from Morocco, the first charter flight arrived in Italy on Thursday.
About 200 migrant farmworkers protested Thursday in the Foggia area of southern Italy against temporary legalization measures brought in by the government. The migrants claimed there is ''a lack of rights and not manpower'' in Italian fields.
Migrant farmworkers employed in Italy's agricultural sector have thanked the Italian government for passing an amnesty that will give them the chance to apply for a short-term stay permit. Some, however, note that a six-month temporary permit makes it impossible for them to plan for the future.