patrick.net

New York Times article today

NAPLES, Italy — “The desperation is taking its toll.”

That’s what Armando Gallinari, a father of five who runs a small flower shop in the north of Naples, told us. His shop has been closed for nearly a month.

“Since then I’ve had nothing coming in at all,” he said. “As of yet, I haven’t received any government assistance. We have nowhere to turn.”

Everyone knows Italy’s story by now. The first European nation to be hit hard by the coronavirus, it has become a harbinger for the rest of Europe and America. First, there was the lockdown. Then the sight of a health care system stretched to the point of collapse and the terror of a rising death count.

Now, nearly a month after the country went into lockdown, Italy is sending another warning. The economy is in trouble, bound for a major contraction. And the precariously situated workers — self-employed, seasonal, informal — are suffering the most. It’s not clear how much longer they can survive.


While the coronavirus has been concentrated in the country’s north, especially the regions of Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna, the economic effects are most severe in the poorer, less industrialized south.

In Campania, the region of which Naples is the capital, 41 percent of people are at risk of poverty. Work is a problem: Last year, unemployment was around 20 percent and about that proportion of the region’s work force was underemployed. And for those who do have work, it is often informal, insecure — and particularly vulnerable to the crisis.


Informal workers — carers, cleaners, construction workers, waiters, couriers, drivers, agriculture workers and many more — are doubly vulnerable. First, because the work on which they depend has disappeared. Second, because the measures put in place by the Italian government to ameliorate the worse effects of the crisis — a moratorium on mortgages, loan repayment holidays for businesses and wage protections for those laid off — do not protect them.

The government has granted a one-time payment of 600 euros, around $650, to the self-employed and to seasonal workers in the tourist sector. But Ms. Vitale technically works in the transport sector, so she can’t apply for the support. For now, she too is getting by with handouts from volunteer organizations.