Italy's Culture Workers to Strike Over ‘Genocide Normalisation’ and Labour Conditions
Tomorrow’s action follows an 8 May strike among artists and workers at the Venice Biennale, and is organised by many of the same organisations. Courtesy of ANGA.
Artists, curators and other cultural workers in as many as 20 Italian cities are expected to walk out tomorrow following calls from unions and grassroots organisations for a sector-wide strike.
The coalition of 19 groups behind the action is demanding improvements to working conditions, higher wages and an end to “artwashing practices that use the language of art to normalise war and occupation”.
A spokesperson for grassroots cultural heritage activist organisation Mi Riconosci?, one of two key organisers of the action, told Ocula that its members in museums, galleries, theatres and libraries will strike, and called on the Italian government to take action on its demands.
The spokesperson added: “Cultural workers in Italy suffer low wages and precarious employment for the large part; they work often for free, for hours or days; health and safety is something that [many] people are not even able to imagine or ask [for].”
Action is expected in Rome, Venice, Milan, Naples, Turin, Lecce and Bologna. In Milan, organisers have said the public programmes of several cultural institutions could be affected.
A list of demands issued from participating advocacy groups and unions spans increased regulation around volunteer work and internships, access to sick pay for all, full protection of cultural workers’ rights to express dissent and mobilise against “the war economy” and the elimination of all forms of discrimination and violence in the workplace.
Data published by Mi Riconosci? in 2024, taken from a survey of more than 400 Italian cultural workers, found that almost 50 percent had experienced sexual, verbal and/or physical harassment in the workplace on at least one occasion. Testimonies from arts works in both institutional and commercial spaces shared by the organiser detail instances of discrimination, often on the basis of gender, leading to workers feeling unsafe and resigning their positions.
Tomorrow’s action follows an 8 May strike among artists and workers at the Venice Biennale, during which almost 30 national pavilions shuttered in a protest against the presence of the Israeli pavilion. Many of the same organisations are involved in calling for this week’s action, including the Art Not Genocide Alliance (ANGA).
The campaign group told Ocula: “The 12 June strike is a collective refusal of genocide normalisation in culture and of the precarious labour conditions that cultural institutions are built on. These two things are not separate. They are the same architecture.”
Discussions around a sector-wide strike have been ongoing among several organisations for more than a year. However, organising stepped up following the biennale, fuelled by what the anti-Zionist assembly of art and cultural workers Galassia has called “the complicity of the cultural system”.
A spokesperson for the organisation explained: “Artwashing occurs when institutions promote values such as democracy, inclusion and sustainability while maintaining ties to actors connected to war, extractivism, environmental destruction, or other forms of structural violence.
“In the current context, this is particularly evident in the silence or depoliticised responses of many cultural institutions toward the genocide in Palestine and the wider regional violence affecting Lebanon.”
Galassia was also present throughout strikes and protests during the biennale. However, the organisation has said that tomorrow’s action goes further in connecting labour conditions, cultural policy and political struggle.
“For many of us, this represents the emergence of a collective voice that has been missing from the Italian cultural field for a very long time,” the spokesperson added. “It has made evident that when cultural workers unionise and organise collectively, they can genuinely have an impact.”
Ocula contacted Italy’s Ministry of Culture for comment.
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