Venice, demonstration for workers' rights in front of the Biennale Gardens

Culture workers’ demonstration yesterday morning, Saturday, Oct. 28, around 9 a.m., at the Venice Biennale. In front of the Giardini, while the 18th Architecture Biennale is still in progress (it will end on Nov. 26), a group of art and culture workers presented, during a sit-in, the Metropolitan Charter of Cultural Work and, at the same time, denounced the conditions they consider unacceptable that characterize cultural work in Venice and in the galaxy afferent to the Biennale Foundation. The sit-in and the publication of the Charter, the protesters let them know, are the first stage of a journey called Biennalocene, an assembly uniting women and men art and culture workers and students, which was born in June at the impetus of a number of groups and associations, namely Sale Docks, Institute of Radical Imagination, Mi Riconosci and ADL Cobas.

The time, early in the morning, was designed to intercept workers entering the service before 10 a.m. The activists, about 50 people, unfurled a banner that read “Biennalocene. For cultural labor rights.” They then recounted in a series of speeches claims and working conditions. Later, in a blitz some of them entered inside the Biennale gates armed with megaphones, and read the Charter drafted by the assembly, displaying signs and distributing leaflets to workers entering the Biennale and to curious visitors. The points of the Charter, which calls for, among other things, a minimum wage at 10 euros, the adoption of the mandatory Federculture sector contract, a stop to free internships and the abusive use of VAT numbers, and the fight against all kinds of discrimination, were heard, garnering the solidarity and interest of the public.

“We saw a few days ago an enthusiasm of politics for a change at the top of the Biennale,” said Federica Arcoraci of Biennalocene from the presidiom "but we in our meetings have collected dozens of testimonies that speak of a situation in which there is really nothing to celebrate: starvation contracts, unfair, abusive, false VAT numbers masquerading as employees, tenders to the maximum discount on the skin of workers. It is a situation that would affect many Venetian cultural institutions, and that would be particularly serious in some pavilions and collateral events of the Biennale world, on which the Foundation nevertheless believes it has no responsibility. “We have asked the Biennale,” relaunches another of the protesters, Marco Baravalle, “to meet with us to discuss the adoption of the Charter, and we ask it, immediately, to take charge of these abuses and to take steps so that the working conditions of its employees are extended to all workers in national participations, external pavilions and side events branded Biennale. And we await a response.”

No response from Biennale management in the morning, but workers are confident of openings: “the situation can no longer be postponed.” Finally, in the morning, the website of the new platform was also launched: www.biennalocene.com

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Venice, demonstration for workers' rights in front of the Biennale Gardens

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