Laura Hardeep Kaur was in her office when she received a photo via WhatsApp of a severed arm placed in a crate used for collecting fruit and vegetables.
The trade unionist was horrified but didn’t hesitate to get into her car and drive to an address 20 minutes away in Castelverde, a hamlet in the province of Latina, about 30 miles from Rome.
Kaur described a scene she said she would never forget. Medics were trying to stabilise Satnam Singh, a 31-year-old labourer from India, who was bleeding profusely after being crushed by a machine on the farm where he had been working. He had lost his right arm in the accident and suffered injuries to his legs.
Instead of taking Satnam to hospital, his employer, Antonello Lovato, allegedly left him on the street outside his home, his arm in the black crate beside him, and fled, ignoring pleas for help from Satnam’s partner.
Satnam was transported by air ambulance to a hospital in Rome, where he died two days later. Medics said if he had been taken to hospital straight away, he would probably have survived. Lovato was arrested this month on charges of murder.
“Satnam was dumped as if he was a commodity,” Kaur, who is general secretary of the Frosinone-Latina branch of the agriculture workers’ union Flai-Cgil, told the Observer.
“I have come across plenty of tragic cases among farm labourers here… there are workers who have been beaten by their employers and reduced to slavery. There have been suicides. But until Satnam, I had never heard of a case so cruel.”
Satnam’s death has put the spotlight on the rampant exploitation of workers on Italian farms, facilitated by flaws in immigration and labour law which for more than four decades have enabled a criminal system known as caporalato – a lucrative, tightly run network of gangmasters who illegally recruit poorly paid labourers – to flourish.
The Cgil, Italy’s largest trade union, estimates that as many as 230,000 people – more than a quarter of agricultural workers – do not have a formal employment contract. About 20% are Italian, while 55,000 are women, some of whom have been victims of rape. Meanwhile, a report in March by the analysts Moody’s found that Italy persistently had the highest incidence of modern-day slavery in Europe – approximately 2,000 incidents over five years since 2018.
Satnam earned €5 an hour to work long, gruelling days on a farm in an area of Latina known as the Agro Pontino, a stretch of former marshland that extends towards beach resorts along the Mediterranean coast. The area, well known for its watermelons, kiwis, artichokes and courgettes, which are sold across Italy and beyond, hosts the second largest concentration of farms in the country.
As farming in the area intensified in the 1980s, gangmasters would recruit poor Italians from mountain towns to work in the fields. Cheap labour subsequently became sourced mainly from the increasing number of foreigners arriving in Italy. They came from Africa or eastern Europe, although today Indian Sikhs make up the majority of the foreign workforce.
“All that has changed in recent decades is the nationalities of the people being exploited,” said Kaur. “We have an agricultural sector which is fundamentally based on exploitation. I don’t like to say it, and people accuse us of damaging Italy’s image – but we’re not the ones ruining the image.”
Satnam came to Italy from Germany two years ago after arriving in Europe via the western Balkans migration route. Like many other farm workers, he had no residence permit or legal work contract.
Many farm labourers arrive in Italy by boat, but plenty arrive legally by air after paying a gangmaster thousands of euros before leaving in the belief they are coming to Italy for a genuine job.
The criminals are able to easily exploit the decreto flussi, an Italian law that sets yearly quotas on the number of non-European citizens who can enter the country for work. The law specifies that incoming workers need to be sponsored by an employer. Often, an employer will make an official request to the Italian state to hire staff from Punjab in India, for example. Once this is agreed, the gangmaster – often a fellow countryman of the prospective workers – springs into action, taking fees ranging between €4,000 and €20,000 from each labourer and sharing the profit with the employer in Italy.
Workers often arrive at the airport to find that no job exists, only to be exploited further by people who promise to get a residence document for them. If the workers fail to secure that, they automatically become “illegal” under the Bossi-Fini law of 2002, which is a criminal offence and can lead to deportation.
On the other hand, there are many labourers, including Italians, who work with legal documents but who are still exploited.
Baljinder Singh, 28, said he paid an intermediary about €4,000 before leaving India two years ago. He is waiting for his residence permit to be renewed. “Some farm owners are OK, but others treat people very badly,” he said. “Most only pay about €5 an hour, and many have the problem of not being paid on time. You don’t get proper breaks and some don’t even give you time to drink water.”
His friends Marvinder and Palwinder, also both 28, paid €12,000 and €13,000, respectively, to middlemen. “It was our life savings,” said Marvinder, who is without legal documents. “We work in awful conditions, picking fruit and vegetables which Italy sells to other countries. It is shameful.
“I want to say this: Italy must open up immigration. We need proper work contracts, which would benefit Italy, as then we could pay taxes.”
The group is unable to work because farm owners in Latina have only been employing those with official documents since Satnam’s death. The labourers are exploited in the housing market too, many renting beds in cramped, squalid rooms. Baljinder and his friends have turned to the Sikh temple in the town of Cisterna di Latina for food and lodging. Satnam’s funeral is due to be held at the temple but, more than one month since his death, the ceremony has been delayed while Italy arranges visas for his relatives.
“We didn’t know him personally, but his death has had a big impact on the community,” said Baljinder.
The caporalato system is widespread across Italy. Police in Verona said last week that they had freed dozens of Indian workers from slavery and arrested two gangmasters, of Indian nationality, who between them were found with €500,000. The criminal system has also been adopted in other sectors.
In an address to parliament, Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, said Satnam’s death was “atrocious” while promising not to renounce the fight against the gangmaster system.
“Satnam is not an exception,” said Marco Omizzolo, a sociology professor from Latina who infiltrated farms there for his research on exploitation.
“This is an organised situation that has been present for years and which crosses criminal economic interests, sometimes mafiosi. From north to south, there’s continuous violation of human rights. The government has no intention of tackling it in a serious way.”
