Friday, November 27, 2026, 9:00 PM "Beyond the Invisible. Gangmastering and Labor Exploitation. A Dehumanizing System. Solutions for an Ethical Economy"
With Marco Omizzolo, a sociologist at Eurispes and a professor at Sapienza University of Rome, he has been analyzing and exposing forms of agro-mafia and gangmastering in the field for years. He has received the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic for his civil commitment to defending the rule of law and for his reporting on mafias in Italy and abroad, gangmastering, international trafficking, and labor exploitation.
and Yvan Sagnet, an engineer and activist who led the historic 2011 Nardò farm workers' strike, founder and president of NoCap, an association that promotes ethical supply chains and a concrete alternative to illegal labor and exploitation; he was awarded the honor of Knight of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic for his contribution to combating and exposing the exploitation of farm workers.
The fight against labor exploitation is one of the fundamental pillars of the Italian Constitution, both in its fundamental principles and in the protection of workers' rights.
However, labor exploitation and gangmastering are among the deepest and, unfortunately, still dramatically present scourges of our productive and social system, manifesting themselves throughout Italy in various forms and systematically affecting both foreign and Italian workers.
The province of Cuneo holds a sad record: it was in the Granda that the first conviction for gangmastering was reached in Northern Italy.
Marco Omizzolo and Yvan Sagnet tell us their stories and the stories of women and men, laborers, migrants, and Italians who rebel against the slavery of their masters. Beautiful stories with happy endings, but also very sad and thought-provoking ones. Now that slavery is illegal, the data tells us that there have never been such high levels of exploitation in the world.
The last, the invisible, are the many Italian citizens who live in extremely precarious situations and diminished rights, accepting paltry wages or irregular contracts due to the lack of alternative employment. They include the many migrant workers who, in recent years, due to major changes in immigration regulations, find themselves without residence permits or in extremely precarious situations, but also the "so-called regular" workers who, nevertheless, do not escape a system of exploitation, starvation wages, and lives in dilapidated housing, and who accept work as "servants.".
Human trafficking with an extremely high level of brutality. A heavy psychological and social impact due to isolation and dependence on the gangmaster, especially for those living in ghettos like Borgo Mezzanone.
Anyone who chooses to break this gangmaster system and takes a public stand against the phenomenon faces systematic intimidation strategies aimed at imposing silence through fear.
To a system of gangmasters that is also intertwined with criminal organizations, because the mafias not only tolerate gangmasters but also integrate them by controlling the entire agri-food supply chain, Yvan Sagnet's NoCap Association responds with a concrete alternative in terms of employment and by demonstrating, through its supply chains, that it is possible to produce quality goods at affordable prices while respecting the environment and workers' rights.
