I’ll tell you about the chaos in the vaccine school
What does the union want with respect to anti-Covid vaccinations among teachers? The post by Mario Seminerio, editor of the Phastidio blog
For some time, Italy has been shrouded in a deep mystery: what exactly does the union want with respect to anti-Covid vaccinations in the workplace? The official position is known, and has been expressed several times by the leader of the CGIL, Maurizio Landini: a law on the obligation for professional categories and in the workplace. Position that contrasts with the historical one of the trade union: no laws, better bargaining between social partners. It will be said that a pandemic is a sufficiently exceptional circumstance to depart from tradition. But there is more.
On the vaccination obligation for "frontal" categories of workers, the union obviously did not oppose that for health personnel. And we just needed that. The situation appears quite different for another category of “frontals”, the teachers.
THE AUGUST PROTOCOL
Here we arrived, on the eve of August 15th, at the signing of a protocol between the ministry and the trade unions on safety in schools. For long hours it was unclear what the terms of the deal were. Or perhaps it was even too much, in the sense that we all understood that unvaccinated teachers would be entitled to free tampons, and that the related heavy financial burdens would be borne by the budgets of the institutions.
Even so, the story was still unclear. Were the "institutional budgets" to be understood as inclusive of the funds requested from families to supply primary needs, such as toilet paper? Or were we thinking of payments to be paid by taxpayers to allow rear-end collisions every 48 hours for unvaccinated personnel, a practice that would end up becoming a sort of modern medieval torture?
In the meantime, the National Association of principals made it known that it was resolutely opposed to the hypothesis of free tampons and, after protests on social media, the ministry came up with a note that did not clarify anything but seemed to exclude free tampons ad libitum ( sorry for the joke) of the unvaccinated, bringing the free of charge to the area of diagnostic swabs to "support the most fragile, or those who cannot get vaccinated for particular reasons that will be further indicated"
This last sentence is a masterpiece of Italian ambiguity: the “sacrosanct” category is placed, and behind it the additions and exceptions; so indeterminate that an Airbus A380 would pass through it.
COUNTERORDIN, MINISTER
It is difficult to escape the suspicion that the ministry led by Patrizio Bianchi has reversed, as comments (and, above all, analyzes) Vitalba Azzollini, who demolishes the rhetoric of the protocol with logic :
[…] The explanation according to which tampons would be free exclusively for "those who cannot get vaccinated", and therefore should take on a tampon every 48 hours, does not hold up: people who cannot be vaccinated for health reasons have been exempted from the obligation of "green pass", therefore also from the obligation of swab, with the decree-law of the end of July, and the presentation of a specific medical certificate is required (dln 105, art. 3, c. 3 and circular of the Ministry of Health no. 35309 of 4 August last). If, on the other hand, it was intended to refer only to a generic free control for the frail unvaccinated, the emphasis given in the protocol to the allocation of resources is not understood, given that these are limited cases.
FEAR OF COMPETITION?
The point remains: why use this clumsy and clumsy pseudo nudge , the green pass , instead of the compulsory vaccination by professional category? Let's venture: maybe because the union is terrified that a revolt could break out among its members and lose many, perhaps to the advantage of some "basic" and "libertarian" acronym? Ah, to know.
And let's not forget the other formidable bank of inaction: any vaccination obligation imposed on the school professions would automatically have brought with it the one for students, aged 12 and up. A real beehive filled with explosives.
We need an "ah, know" also with regard to workplaces, where the Triple has put itself in the crossroads of the main road of consultation between social partners, invoking instead the obligation of law. Here too, why? For fear of the employers fleeing forward, who aim (according to the not too implied) to thin out the workforce with disciplinary measures?
NON-PUNISHABLE OBLIGATION
The obsession with this employer threat, real or imaginary, leads Landini to fight with logic:
I do not think that an update of the Protocols can replace a legislative measure. I would add, if the Government were to consider preparing a provision in this sense, it will not have to provide for measures that include neither demotion, nor wage reduction, nor layoffs, issues that have nothing to do with health and safety at work. .
If you put a legal obligation, what to do with those who decide to violate this obligation, without having justification, how could health care be? We are in Italy, the obligations that cannot be sanctioned excite us. Don't we need sanctions for behaviors that deliberately create health and safety risks in the workplace? Really, Landini? Or maybe you imagine a special cig for no-vax, to be hinged in the context of the reform of social safety nets,which already does not bode well on its own?
And anyway, let me say that I am impressed, said without irony, for this union seized by the fear of not being able to co-govern a protocol agreed with the employers. Are we really at this level of existential insecurity? If so, the members have no reason for concern and the leaders of the Triple must explain what they are really afraid of.
It will be said that, in health care, the union has not opposed the obligation to vaccinate. I repeat: I would have liked to see that as well. Perhaps the numbers of the "objectors" were and are very limited compared to other sectors. And certainly here it would have been prohibitive, even for “sporting” trade unions, to argue against the obligation to vaccinate.
AT THE CORNER
Then the suspicion arises that for private work the union invokes a law relying on the fact that it will never see the light, in a government of very large coalition jumble like the current one. Let us remember: this is the union that – rightly – threatens havoc if politics were to invent a law on the minimum wage. To the point that the issue has gone off the radar, net of the political marketing initiatives of some .
Therefore, the suspicions remain that the "institutional" union, that is the Triple, is afraid of being cornered both by the competition of other acronyms, which wink at no-vax and boh-vax, and by companies , who could use the pandemic as a Trojan horse to push the current industrial relations system. Do not ask me how: I already have mine, of paranoia, without having to go and put those of others in my head.
The whole is still not a pretty sight. But what we all know is valid: at the moment, the epidemiological picture is still such as to allow us to sing on the roofs and defend our gardens. Hoping that the Delta variant will not be replaced by another, more malignant one, to whistle the end of the recreation.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/vaccini-scuola-sindacati-cosa-succede/ on Tue, 17 Aug 2021 06:00:47 +0000.