 Italy is one of the countries that has been worst affected by the covid-19 pandemic. However, over the past few weeks, the situation has slightly improved and despite the immense suffering, there is a possibility that the country will slowly begin reopening soon. The lockdown is set to end on Monday. Meanwhile, a number of new issues have come up and these issues are likely to come up in many countries which have been affected by this pandemic. This includes mainly the situation of the working class, especially the situation of the migrant workers and the problems they face. To discuss more about this, we have with us Mauricio Coppola, an activist with Poterello Popolo which is power to the people and left his political party in Italy. Thank you so much Mauricio for joining us. Thank you very much. Yes, so to begin with I understand that there is a strike happening on the 21st of May and this is a strike by the migrants. So there's been a lot of debate about the problems faced by migrants over the past many years but I understand that the covid-19 pandemic has especially brought these problems to the fore. So could you tell us first a bit about what this strike is about and what are the key demands? Okay, yes the strike was called by the field workers, the migrant field workers because in the context in which the government decided to talk again about the regularization of migrant workers, so giving a permit to stay to the irregular and black working migrants, it is totally limited, the possibility to access to the permit to the resident permit because it is only for field workers and only for care workers but also in these two categories you have a lot of points you have to go to guarantee for having access to the resident permit to a temporary permit because it's only for six months so the field workers they say it is not enough, we don't want to be used only as a commodity, as a workforce, we are human beings, so you have to give us permits for a longer period, permits that are possible to convert also to a longer working permit and they decided to stop working and to make a strike now on the 21st of May and for us of Potera Pobli it is sure that you have to sustain to support this strike politically because it is not only linked to the question of a permit, it is also linked to a question of salary, of wages because field workers are working on the very precarious conditions and this is also something they push forward to say documents are not enough, it is the most important, one of the most important condition to having the power also to negotiate good salaries, good wages but the point of the wages is something that is coming shortly after the question of the documents so they ask also for dignified salaries and wages and they are also asking for a housing program because both in the south of Italy you have around the fields where the migrants are working, you have a lot of tents, of camps, of ghettos where the migrants are living without warm water, without possibility to protect yourself from the coronavirus diffusion so they are also asking that the government interweaves for having a housing project, a housing program, they are also saying we will pay your rent, this is not a problem, if you give us a good salary, a normal salary you can also afford the rent but give us the possibility to have to rent houses because without the contract you have no resident permit, you have no the possibility to rent the house so all these questions, the permission, the permit, the resident permit is really linked to all other social rights they are asking. So a key question on this has been the proposal for the immigration itself, so is this an old proposal that has been pending for some time or is this something that has come up in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic and also what is the response, the approach of most of the mainstream political organize parties in Italy towards it? So in Italy you have like a migrant laws that is just linking the permit for staying in Italy to a working contract, so without a working contract you have no permission, so even if you work but without the working contract you have no permission to stay in Italy and this is a system that is really, it was settled and 30 years ago and till then all the laws, all the reforms, they didn't change something in this basic idea. So you have the problem that every 5-10 years the government is saying we have to make a regularization campaign because our economy needs this workforce, the migrant workforce and now it's again the moment because why is it the moment because the government is saying we have a very big problem with food because the work force is missing on the fields, we risk that the half of our harvest will stay there, they will just lay down in the ground without having the possibility to sell it in the supermarkets, so we need now to regularize this workforce for a guarantee that the supermarkets can sell it, but what is the problem there that first the prices are going up, so the prices of vegetables and fruits and second the profits of the supermarkets are going up, but at the same time the salaries and the social rights of the workers not only in the fields but also inside of the supermarkets so the Italian workers of warehouses of cashiers and so on, they didn't see increasing rights and salaries and wages, so these are like very linked situations of different categories of the working class in Italy from the field workers to the Italian workers inside of the cities and also as workers as consumers because if you lose your work with this lockdown, the Covid lockdown, you have also with the higher prices, higher less money to live, so you have to pay this for the vegetables and so on, so we say this is a very essential point and struggle to link also these different categories of the of the working class, the government is really treating this like an emergency and the emergencies we have to give the permit, the resident permit for six months, after six months we will pass this Covid crisis, this coronavirus crisis and then we can return to normality with exploiting the workforce and so on and we are saying no it's not possible, our demand is really we need permanent resident permit permission to stay because we cannot go back to the normality as they wanted with exploitation, no social rights and so on. Right, so another key question is that you work extensively with migrants in Napoli as well as your organization, so could you talk a bit about the conditions they're facing right now especially after the Covid-19 crisis? So the situation I mean it's not only for the migrants working in the fields or in the private houses as care workers and so on but the both also for refugees living in the refugee camps, I mean the refugee camps that were very precarious living conditions also before the corona crisis but with the crisis the governments and the institutions organizing these refugee camps they didn't give any possibility to care of the people, so it means that people are in rooms with seven to ten person with only one shower even with one shower for 50-60 people so we have really a lot of big problems and also I mean there are no health controls inside these refugee camps so we don't know if there are corona crisis cases inside the camps and there is no control in the part of the state, so the refugees yesterday for example we went in front of the Interior Ministry representation here in the city of Naples for saying these are not conditions we can tolerate anymore and there is a big tendency to organize themselves again for migrants even if it is a big we have big problems to organize struggles and movements with this lockdown even if it opened a little bit but it is not so easy to take back the street and take back the struggles in this period but I think that the the power that is coming from the migrants is very strong and in these next days we'll also show how we can go on with this organization of these demands and yeah absolutely and finally just to ask a general larger question so Italy like I said is going to be one of the countries where a lot of the questions are going to come up regarding you know what are the kind of struggles the working class can do at this point of time what are the kind of areas that these struggles have to be conducted in so at a national level what are the key demands that Paterial Popolo is presenting to the government to the authorities regarding both relief as well as restructuring that is needed for the country so first of all it's clear that we are coming from 10 15 years of a restructuring of the health sector and they took away the money for public health sector system and they put it in the private sector and it is clear this has to stop we have to give power again to the public health care system because this corona crisis showed us that without the strong health care system you cannot guarantee the social rights and the health of all the collectivity in the in the country so it's not only for migrants or for Italians it's really for everyone so this is one of the first question then we also ask because the crisis is hitting very hard so we are after the health care crisis after the corona crisis we are in the middle of an economic crisis and this economic crisis means unemployment poverty and a lot of precarious situations in the neighborhoods and so on so we are also active in distributing food packages around the neighborhoods the poorer neighborhoods but we are also asking the government to give a basic income for this emergency a basic income that is linked to the emergency that could be after this emergency like a possibility a struggle field for the all working class to expand social welfare and public welfare and and we know also that the next step of the crisis will be the austerity crisis because Italy needs money from abroad needs money from the european union and from the from the banks and we also know that the class war is like this the bourgeoisie will not accept to pay this money back so they will put it on the on the on the workers and so the workers they have to organize themselves also for not paying the cost of the crisis as it was also before already before in 2008-2009 and then we have also big movements inside of the of the workplaces it was in the first phase in the first period of the crisis so in the middle of march we had a lot of movements and wildcats rights inside of the workplaces for asking for protecting the life for asking social rights inside of the workplaces and i think now even if the government gave some response on that it will come back because now it's opening the second period of this of the corona crisis and even if the if the fights and the demands will change the working class will will move will organize and we have to support them in in popular control structures so that we can guarantee that the rights inside of the workplace at workplaces are guaranteed right thank you so much Mauricio for talking to us thank you very much that's all we are time for today keep watching people's dispatch