Subcontracting Chain and Working Conditions in Italy: Evidence from the Food and Meat Industry

Abstract

Outsourcing is a phenomenon that combines business strategies, structural characteristics of companies and working relationships. In Italy outsourcing is widespread, facilitated by a legislation that has removed limits and made the outsourced production and the management of the workforce easier. As a result, employment, working conditions and industrial relations in the value chain have been affected by this phenomenon in terms of high fragmentation and work protection. In this scenario the industries which have been more negatively impacted by the phenomenon are the ones under high pressure from large retailers and the demand for low cost goods, such as the logistics and the meat sector. The article aims at presenting the analysis of outsourcing phenomenon in Italy, by examining its causes, its mechanism and its consequences on workers and their trade unions. In this context, an inadequacy of the present regulatory approaches in addressing the phenomenon of outsourcing has been observed. Its content has been enriched with the analysis of a case study, called “Modena system,” which unveils the weaknesses of outsourcing in a specific sector, the meat industry, and the concrete responses taken by the public actors and trade unions to deal with them.