No more work disguised as volunteer work in cultural heritage. Bill presented to stop it

Today, in the Chamber of Deputies, activists from the campaign Do you recognize me? I am a cultural heritage professional, the initiative created to improve the working conditions of cultural professors, presented the proposed law for the regulation of volunteer work in cultural heritage. It is a proposal that aims to put an end to the widespread phenomenon of work disguised as volunteer work that, in recent years, has gradually become established in the sphere of culture, and is expanding to other sectors of society.

The presentation of the bill to regulate volunteer work in cultural heritage at the Chamber of Deputies. Ph. Credit Finestre Sull’Arte

It sounds self-evident to say that work should be paid, and in a manner suitable to guarantee the worker a decent living. It is a principle on which any civilized society is founded, and the Italian state establishes it in Article 36 of the Constitution. For the cultural heritage sector, however, such an assumption is often far from being applied in practice. Paid work, real work, decent work, has had to give way to work concealed by volunteerism: since 1993, the year in which the Ronchey Law sanctioned the possibility for the Ministry to make use of volunteers to ensure the opening of museums, libraries and archives, the number of volunteers engaged in the service of culture has been inexorably increasing.

The proposal starts precisely from the Ronchey law in order to modify it in such a way as to leave no margin to allow the Ministry to make up for its shortcomings through the services provided by volunteers. Volunteers often without specific studies behind them, without adequate training, without any qualification, sent out into the cold to act as guides, to keep cultural institutes open, to support important activities such as cataloguing, valorization, and communication. And, as the opposite side of the coin, multi-skilled professionals who, in the absence of serious job offers, are forced to resort to volunteer work in order to operate in the field for which they were trained. All this in the context of a Ministry of Cultural Heritage that, according to CGIL estimates, has a gap of at least three thousand in its workforce, and often resorts to atypical forms of work to fill the gaps. And if the state is the primary employer of precarious labor, one can hardly expect private individuals to provide better examples.

The first measure contained in the proposed law (it can be read in full at this address) is the amendment of Article 3 of the Ronchey Law (Law 4 of 1993), the one that allows the use of volunteers to ensure the daily opening, with extended hours, of museums, libraries and archives: the law would be reformulated so that volunteers can be used only to assist the staff of ministerial structures. A fundamental difference: if under the current law volunteers can also become the only resources capable of guaranteeing the opening of a place of culture (without, therefore, the need for the presence of an employee), with the proposed law they would simply become resources to support the professionals regularly employed in public institutions. Again: to complete the first paragraph, there is the deletion of paragraph 1a, which allows theintegration of ministerial staff with the staff of volunteer organizations, and, in return, a new paragraph would be introduced to require that the number of volunteers can never exceed the number of employees hired under regular employment contracts. The latest measure on the Ronchey law is the addition of a paragraph to Article 3 to prevent volunteers from being involved in “activities concerning the preservation, promotion, valorization, cataloguing, study and linventariation of cultural, archival and book heritage, and any kind of educational activity.”

The operation, however, does not stop only at the Ronchey Law. Changes are also planned to the Cultural Heritage Code (Legislative Decree 42 of 2004). In Article 112, the possibility of using voluntary associations to “regulate common instrumental services intended for the enjoyment and enhancement of cultural assets” would be eliminated. Finally, the last important measures concern the Regulations on the Attributions and Careers of the Staff of State Public Libraries (Presidential Decree 1356 of 1966). The proposal, in this case, intends to act in particular on how workers can access services in libraries. In Article 6, the possibility of admitting, as volunteers, persons wishing to participate in competitions for posts in the directive, concept and executive careers is eliminated: only volunteers identified under the Ronchey Law would thus be admitted to volunteer service in libraries. And in the same article, the measure allowing for the evaluation of volunteer service in competitions would be deleted, and one would be added that would specify, clearing the field of any misunderstanding, that volunteer service “is in no way equated with employment service.” On the same wavelength, changes would be made in Article 7 and Article 11 to specify that, for competitive examinations, the only service that counts toward the awarding of evaluations is work service.

Representatives of the political forces present at the press conference today all showed interest in the proposal. The first to speak was Isabella Adinolfi of the Five Star Movement, a graduate in cultural heritage conservation and therefore particularly interested in the subject and close to the positions of Mi riconosci activists: she stated that “the proposals certainly can be improved but I think we are definitely on the right track.” Next, Andrea Maestri of Liberi e Uguali, a lawyer who specializes in cultural heritage law, promised that his party will adopt the proposal for the regulation of volunteerism in cultural heritage “as a concrete programmatic contribution”: Liberi e Uguali is therefore, at the moment, the only party willing to include the proposal in its program. Chiara Gribaudo of the PD offered her willingness to support the proposal and declared that the whole of the next legislature will have to plead this cause: in fact, this is not only a matter for the Committee on Culture, but an issue that concerns all of Parliament, since we are talking about work, and on a subject of this kind we need transversality. Finally, to close the speeches, Viola Carofalo of Potere al Popolo said that her party will fully acquire the proposal and will allow itself to propose further ideas for improvement and contributions that the bill can incorporate.

The proposal has therefore aroused keen interest: in the coming weeks there will be further presentation events, and Mi riconosci activists, who should not lack the support of all of us, will try to extend consensus among the political forces. Moreover, the urgency of a form of regulation of volunteerism in cultural heritage is obvious. Volunteerism which, of course, is an indispensable resource if used according to the spirit that should animate it: that which would like it to be a spontaneous activity, lent on a non-profit basis and exclusively for purposes of solidarity (as, moreover, sanctioned by the framework law of 1991). But it becomes deleterious if used as a substitute for paid work. And firm action is needed to curb a malpractice that can no longer be tolerated.

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