Monthly Archives: May 2020

WORKERS across the world pressed demands for the protection of those on the front line as May Day celebrations were scaled back as a result of the global Covid-19 pandemic today.

General secretary of Frances CGT trade union federation Philippe Martinez said: This is an opportunity to bear the social demands that we have been defending for a long time and that the crisis has highlighted.

The country remains on lockdown and the rally traditionally held in Paris was cancelled with people urged to flood social media and join solidarity actions on their balconies.

Far-right leader Marine Le Pen was condemned for defying the emergency measures to lay a wreath for Joan of Arc, whom the fascists have tried to co-opt as a nationalist symbol.

Around 24,000 people have died from the coronavirus in France with unions warning that workers should not pay the price of the crisis generated by the political choices of a deadly capitalist system.

The Greek government called for the traditional May Day marches and rallies to be suspended for a week. But demonstrations took place in most major cities in Greece, including the capital Athens with trade unionists respecting social distancing measures in Syntagma Square.

PAME said: May 1 is a symbolic day in the struggle for the abolition of exploitation. We honour the martyrs of our class. The dead of Chicago, in Greece the dead of May Day 1924, of May 1936, the 200 communists of Kesariani who were executed by the nazis on May Day 1944.

It called for increased solidarity with health workers and all those on the front line of the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic but insisted that the current crisis was a reminder of the undeniable truth that the deadliest virus is capitalism.

At least three people were arrested in the Philippines as small groups of protesters banged on empty pots and held up placards demanding government aid and safe working conditions, defying a ban on public gatherings.

May First Movement labour federation spokesman Jerome Adonis explained that around 23 million people nearly a quarter of the countrys population face hunger due to no work, no payprovisions in their employment contracts but face arrest for violating quarantine restrictions.

Scores of arrests were made in Turkey, with trade union leaders, including Disk president Arzu Cerkezoglu, violently detained as they made their way to Istanbuls Taksim Square for a symbolic protest.

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Workers across the world demand protections for key workers in scaled back May Day celebrations - Morning Star Online

Zo Whitleys beaming face was exactly the warmth I needed on afreezing winters day in February, when the curatortook me to see aCameron Rowland exhibition atLondons Institute of Contemporary Arts.

After we wound our way through the showa conceptually dense presentation linking the history of the transatlantic slave trade to present-day systems of incarcerationwe madea pitstop at the ICA caf, where Whitley ordered a tea and, as she navigated our tray to a table, explained that she used to work in the service industry as a waitress.

I dont come from money, Whitley, who was namedthe head of the nonprofit Chisenhale Gallery in London in January,told me at one point. Gender and race and their attendant poweror lack thereofare never going to be purely academic to me. Its always part of the way that I am received or perceived.

Waiting tables, she added, wasdeeply unsatisfying labor: no matter how hard you work, you often end up getting shortchanged.

Its another cultural vestige linked to indentured servitude, and to the history of not paying black people equally for their work.

Romuald Hazoume with his work in Uncomfortable Truths, a show Whitley organized at Londons V&A Museum. Photo by Fiona Hanson PA Images/PA Images via Getty Images.

Whitley doesnt shy away from these kinds of discussions. In one room of the Rowland exhibition,a branding iron was positioned in a chilling face-off with a contemporary ankle monitor. It reminded me ofUncomfortable Truths, a show she curated in 2007 at theVictoria & Albert Museum to mark the bicentenary of the abolition of the British slave trade, and to examine its traces in contemporary art and design.The curator does not want to let history become too cosy.

She understands exactly what is going down but wears her wisdom lightly, said artist Lubaina Himid, who first met Whitley when she showed her work in that exhibition, a decade before she would go on to win the Turner Prize. Himid, who later became Whitleys doctoral supervisor, said that each conversation between the two stretched us both in different ways.

Since then, in the span of just a few short years, the 40-year-old curator has played an important role in facilitating conversations about diversity in the art world as museums across the UK are reconsidering the canon.

In a rare opportunity for a mid-career curator, she organized the Cathy Wilkes exhibition at the British Pavilion at last years Venice Biennale.Before that, she was best known as one half of the curatorial duo behind the groundbreaking exhibition Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power,a survey of mid-century works by African American artists illustrating their vital contributions to American art history.The extraordinary outing showcased 20 years of black art during the Civil Rights era, and included works by Frank Bowling, Betye Saar, and Barkley Hendricks.Three years after its debut at Tate Modern, it is still touring, and Whitley has just been recognized for her work on the show with an award from the Association of Art Museum Curators.

Zo has a very rich understanding of many of the key artists from the past 50 years whose work is only recently being collected by major art museums or receiving more widespread critical acknowledgement, said Ralph Rugoff, the director of the Hayward Gallery, where Whitley was previouslyand brieflya curator.She has a very keen grasp of the contemporary scene and a sharp eye for recognizing young artists who are doing truly innovative work.

Whitleys firstand, as it turns out, lastshow at the Hayward, titledReverb, which looks at sound artists includingChristine Sun Kim, Kahlil Joseph, and Oliver Beer, will be her introduction and swansong rolled into one, Whitley said. (Slated to open in June, it has been postponed until at least the fall.)

Benny Andrewss Did the Bear Sit Under a Tree (1969) at Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power at Tate Modern. Estate of Benny Andrews/DACS, London/VAGA, NY.

Whitley was born in Washington, DC, and raised byafather with a keen interest in film and a mother who studied art history with the late David Driskell at the University of Maryland. Her familymoved to Los Angeles when she was a teenager. In the summer of 1999, while she was an art history undergraduate atSwarthmore College, she got a summer internship inLACMAs costume and textiles department under the supervision of Sharon Takeda, who still runs the department today.

She was an LA kid and came in bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and was obviously extremely bright and energetic, Takeda recalled, noting that she still has the feathered and beaded bookmark (an odeto Tom Fords iconic jeans for Gucci) thatWhitley made for her as a thank-you that summer. By the end of the internship, Takeda and her colleague,Kaye Spilker,suggested that Whitley consider curating as a career.

Theres something special about being seen, even at a young age, Whitley told me. On their advice,she applied forthe Royal College of Arts design history program and later graduated with amasters thesis looking at representations of blackness in Vogue magazine.Soon after, shetook a job as an assistant curator at the V&A, and has now lived in South London for 20 years.London continues to appeal to me for the way that it is able to welcome and absorb so many different cultures, Whitley said.

But it was still a few years after she took the V&A job that Whitley made the pivot to working with contemporary artists. She vividly recalls attending the opening of a David Adjaye and Faisal AbduAllah exhibition at the Chisenhale in 2003. Before that, I didnt really have the sense that it was possible to know artists and to actually talk with them, Whitley said.

Ima-Abasi Okon,Infinite Slippage: nonRepugnant Insolvencies T!-a!-r!-r!-y!-i!-n!-g! as Hand Claps of Ms HardLovedFlesh [IM irreducibly-undone because] Quantum Leanage-Complex-Dub(2019). Installation view, Chisenhale Gallery, 2019. Photo: Andy Keate.

As head of theChisenhale, an institution known for itsambitious projects,Whitley plans to commission works from a wide range of artists.

Productively, weve moved beyond a kind of YBA model, Whitley said. An artist doesnt have to be young to be making excellent work, and to be at that pivotal point in their career when a Chisenhale commission might be exactly the thing to help ignite wider public interest.

Whitley started in the role at the beginning of April, as the coronavirus crisis put unprecedented pressure on museums and galleries.

I think the art world gets caricatured as being hyper-competitive, with everybody wanting to be first, or for something to be exclusive or original.But one thing Ive seen is a huge amount of generosity, because everybody is facing the same thing, she said, noting that she has witnessed productive, healthy dialoguebetween directors of smaller institutions.

And despite what appears to be a grim outlook for small institutions amid the crisis, Whitley has reasons for optimism.

This forced reset is giving everyone time to think, she said. We cant do what weve been doing. So people are asking: what might the alternatives look like?

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She Wears Her Wisdom Lightly: How American Curator Zo Whitley Became One of the UKs Most Influential Arts Leaders - artnet News

By Oscar Grenfell 1 May 2020

State and territory leaders are rushing to overturn lockdown measures introduced in response to the pandemic, even though their own modelling indicates that this will result in the more rapid spread of the coronavirus.

The Northern Territory is today lifting a raft of restrictions, while South Australia and other states have outlined roadmaps out of the crisis. This is despite continuing deaths and illness linked to at least four active COVID-19 clusters across the country, and ongoing community transmission.

The aim of all the governments is to create the conditions for broad sections of the working class to be herded back onto the job, so as to resume the flow of corporate profits.

The dangerous implications of this policy have already been demonstrated in sectors that have remained open throughout the crisis. In the construction industry, for instance, the unions and property developers have forced tens of thousands of workers to continue production despite the impossibility of social distancing and have refused to shut sites even when infections have occurred.

The state and territory announcements have been timed to coincide with a meeting today of the expanded national cabinet, composed of the federal government, along with premiers and chief ministers. Each of these gatherings, followed by a press conference of Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy have been markers in the escalating back to work campaign.

In the lead-up to the meeting, Morrison has pressed for the state governments to plan for the reopening of restaurants, bars and clubs. The sector is clearly not essential, but accounts for at least $20 billion in revenue per year.

At the same time, state and federal authorities are rapidly moving to resume face-to-face teaching in the schools, despite widespread opposition, as a precondition for workers returning to their jobs.

The Northern Territory Labor government has thus far gone the furthest in reversing lockdown measures, announcing that from today outdoor activities involving pools and childrens playgrounds will reopen, while weddings and funerals can proceed with an unlimited number of attendees.

Beginning on May 15, indoor activities at cafes, gyms and food courts will be permitted and on June 5, all restrictions on mass sporting events, TAB gambling venues and cinemas will be abolished.

The territory is being used as a test case for broader measures, because its small population and isolation appear to have buffeted it from the worst effects of the pandemic.

That the NT cannot be shut-off from broader developments, however, as was shown this morning with the announcement that four Australian Defence Force personnel had been hospitalised in Darwin after reportedly contracting COVID-19 in the Middle East.

The territory is a hub of the Australian military, with Darwin hosting a major marine base directed against China. Some 2,500 US marines are set to arrive at the base in July, while an unknown number of US intelligence assets come and go from the spy base in Pine Gap near the town of Alice Springs, all year long. The US is currently one of the epicentres of the pandemic and there have already been large-scale outbreaks on board its naval vessels.

The move in the NT is particularly reckless, given that fewer than 5,000 tests have been conducted out of a population of some 250,000.

More than a quarter of Territorians are Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. They suffer the health consequences of centuries of oppression and many continue to live in communities that lack the most basic amenities. While for other demographics, individuals over the age of 60 are considered at risk of serious illness or death if they contract the coronavirus, among Aborigines, the warning age is just 50.

The South Australian state government is reportedly seeking to lift many of its restrictions within three weeks. The Victorian state of emergency concludes on May 11, which is the date that Morrison and state leaders have assigned for a review of all lockdown measures.

In New South Wales, the countrys most populous state and the largest centre of infections, government claims that the worst of the crisis is over have been dealt a blow by a spate of tragic deaths at the Newmarch House aged care home in Western Sydney and by ongoing reports of community transmission.

This morning state authorities announced the thirteenth death at the Newmarch facility. Family members have protested over several weeks that they have been denied information about the plight of their relatives and their health status.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian also revealed that there had been nine new confirmed infections over the previous 24 hours. At least four of them are a result of community transmission in the Penrith area.

The state is nevertheless proceeding with back to work measures, including the reopening of the schools.

This week, the Daily Telegraph published details of a previously secret matrix, which the NSW government is using to plan the end of the lockdown. It appears to provide a cost versus health analysis of a series of measures.

For instance, it is noted that the removal of restrictions on large-scale outdoor gatherings would result in a medium risk of new COVID-19 infections, but this is counted against the high economic and well-being benefits that would result from such a measure. The reintroduction of widespread retail shopping would similarly result in a medium risk of a coronavirus outbreak, but would have high economic benefits.

According to the Telegraph, the NSW state government is hoping that its recently announced abolition of limits on family visits will have been normalised by mid-May, prior to the lifting of other restrictions.

The Murdoch-press, however, claims that there is a group of cabinet ministers in NSW pushing for a faster relaxation of lockdown laws, including Treasurer Dominic Perrottet, Deputy Premier John Barilaro and Customer Service Minister Victor Dominello. Two of those have portfolios that would receive a direct boost from a rapid reopening of the economy.

Similar calculations are being made nationally. This week the media revealed modelling by the Group of Eight universities, commissioned by the government to advise a route out of the crisis.

The academics presented two models. One would require the maintenance of most lockdown measures until at least June, aimed at the effective elimination of the spread of the virus. The other would involve the phased overturn of restrictions and a subsequent policy of controlled adaptation to COVID-19.

The proponents of the latter strategy bluntly stated that it would lead to a slightly higher number of cases, hospitalisations and deaths. All of their modelling is predicated on untested assertions that the health system will be capable of dealing with a rapid spike in infections. Nevertheless Morrison and other government representatives immediately declared that they were not seeking to eliminate the virus, because to do so would have too great an effect on the economy.

Governments are touting a decline in cases to justify the removal of lockdown measures. The reduction, however, is clearly the result of the policies they are seeking to overturn. Within the corridors of power, it is openly discussed that the abolition of the social distancing measures will result in a rapid spike in infections, and inevitably, in deaths.

The Murdoch-owned Australian has been among the most insistent advocates of a speedy return to work. Yesterday, its foreign editor Greg Sheridan spelt out what this would mean, declaring: [B]ased on everything we know about COVID-19 there will likely be a second and a third wave of the pandemic. They could easily be worse than the first. He concluded: Dont think the worst cannot come here.

Featured statements on the coronavirus pandemic

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Australian governments rushing to reverse lockdown measures - World Socialist Web Site

Dont cross picket lines of striking workers. It hurts their ability to negotiate with corporate and reflects poorly on you.

The Daily Iowan; Photo by Ben Smith

Organizers and protestors chant in support of laborers during a Labour Walkout event in Des Moines on Monday, Sept. 4, 2017. Organizations in support of laborers across Iowa such as Service Employees International Union, Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, and Democratic Socialists of America participated in the rally. (Ben Smith/The Daily Iowan)

Peyton Downing, Opinions Columnist April 29, 2020

This pandemic has hurt everyone but some are more hurt than others. Service workers who are interacting with people every day while going about their jobs are in some of the most precarious situations today, and they are not being fairly compensated for it. In protest of unfair working conditions, hundreds of thousands of workers will begin a general strike May 1.

From retail work to food manufacturing, workers require proper wages for their labor in wake of this pandemic. They are risking their lives each and every day they go into work and are not being treated fairly, whether it be a lack of personal protective equipment or an absence of hazard pay.

Its not as though these retailers and service providers are hurting either Amazon alone has had its shares reach a record high at $2,449.05, with CEO Jeff Bezos fortune reaching past $138 billion.

Companies such as Amazon, Target, Walmart, and any other large brand can easily afford to provide for its workers. They just dont feel the need to.

That is why this upcoming strike is so important. In order to make these corporations give the workers what they are owed for their labor, they must feel the pain workers do.

They must be made to understand that without labor, there is nothing. That to keep the labor they have, they must give their workers what is necessary to make it through this economic hardship.

To anyone who thinks this is an immoral act to seek an increase of wages during a pandemic I can see where youre coming from. These are services that are required for society to function. Everyone has to eat, get supplies for work, and be able to keep themselves occupied during whatever stay-at-home orders youre under during this time. What right do these workers have to hold these services hostage?

But I have to ask what right do we have to hold workers hostage? We have to work to live, to have shelter, food, and water. These jobs may be all that allow workers to live, because without adequate social welfare, they will lose their homes and their ability to eat.

Should we force people to risk their lives at these mind-numbing jobs for a pittance of what corporate makes? Force them to risk their lives when its possible to make it safer for them?

I am not asking anyone to join in the general strike, although if you are interested, genstrike.org has an excellent May Day guide put together.

All I ask of those of you reading this is to please respect these workers rights to strike. Do not cross those lines come May 1.

If you believe this is just some minor action that wont amount to anything, I urge you to reconsider, because such strikes are how workers won some of the most important victories throughout history. The eight-hour work day, weekends, minimum wage, the abolition of child labor, and more all came from the influence of labor unions and strikes.

We are on the cusp of great change. In the coming months of this pandemic, as our society continues to adapt, we must make conscious decisions as to how to spend our time, money, and effort.

Please, for the sake of your fellow human beings, respect the strikes. Spend your money at locations that give their workers protective equipment and livable wages. If you want to do more, then please, do more, but at the very least, respect what these workers are trying to accomplish.

Individually, your action may not mean much. But if everyone, everywhere respects the strike, we can help provide and protect fellow workers now, and into the future.

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Opinion: Don't you dare cross that strike line - UI The Daily Iowan

May Day, or International Workers Day, is celebrated with marches and rallies every May 1 to lift up the working people and their demands for freedom, equality, and justice. That is the Red tradition of May Day. But there is also an older Green tradition in which cultures the world over celebrate as Spring arrives in temperate and arctic climates or the wet season arrives in tropical climates. This Green tradition of May Day celebrates all that is free and life-giving on the green Earth that is our commonwealth and heritage. These Red and Green May Day traditions are complementary.

Historian Peter Linebaugh, in hisThe Incomplete, True, Authentic and Wonderful History of May Day, provides an evocative description of the Green tradition of May Day:

Once upon a time, long before Weinberger bombed north Africans, before the Bank of Boston laundered money, or Reagan honored the Nazi war dead, the earth was blanketed by a broad mantle of forests. As late as Caesars time a person might travel through the woods for two months without gaining an unobstructed view of the sky. The immense forests of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America provided the atmosphere with oxygen and the earth with nutrients. Within the woodland ecology, our ancestors did not have to work the graveyard shift, or to deal with flextime, or work from Nine to Five. Indeed, the native Americans whom Captain John Smith encountered in 1606 only worked four hours a week. The origin of May Day is to be found in the Woodland Epoch of History.

Everywhere people went a-Maying by going into the woods and bringing back leaf, bough, and blossom to decorate their persons, homes, and loved ones with green garlands. Outside theater was performed with characters like Jack-in-the-Green and the Queen of the May. Trees were planted. Maypoles were erected. Dances were danced. Music was played. Drinks were drunk, and love was made. Winter was over, spring had sprung.

The Red tradition of May Day developed in response to the rise of capitalism, which undermined the Green tradition of May Day that people the world over had celebrated for millennia. Beginning in the 1500s in a process that continues to this day, landlords and capitalists have increasingly dispossessed working people from their land, their tools of production, and thus control over their means to life.

In the 1500s, rich landowners, with the support of the state, began to appropriate and take exclusive ownership of ancient public lands and forests, enclosing them for their own private profit-seeking purposes. Peasant communities lost their communal use of common fields and forests for grazing animals, hunting game, and gathering food and wood. This process continues today in many parts of the world.

The next stage of dispossession developed with the rise of the factories of industrial capitalism, which underpriced the handcrafted products of artisans, who then became dependent on capitalists for employment in the factories. In the U.S., the American ideal of republican liberty grounded in the economic independence of a free citizenry of small farmers and artisans gave way to a more inequitable class society of many workers and increasingly fewer capitalists, alongside a moderately-sized middle class of professionals and managers. The working people no longer had their freedom grounded in the economic independence provided by their own land and tools. They were now dependent on capitalists for their means of livelihood. When they crossed the threshold of the workplace, they entered a dictatorship where they had to work as directed and surrender their political rights to free speech, press, and assembly in the workplace. They received a fixed wage, while the owners took all the additional value that their labor created. They soon began to call their oppressive and exploited condition wage slavery in a conscious comparison to the conditions of African slaves on southern plantations.

The workers movement that arose in response began to organize labor unions and political parties around a program of cooperative production where workers would democratically manage their collective work and workers would receive the full fruits of their labor. They reasoned that economic democracy in cooperative production was the only way they could restore their freedom and achieve a decent standard of living under the conditions of large-scale production. The first political party in the world to raise this program which soon became known as socialism arose in Philadelphia and New York City in 1929 when labor unions organized the Workingmens Party. The Workies elected the president of the carpenters union to the state Assembly of New York.

The author of the Workies platform resolutions, Thomas Skidmore, soon penned a book calledThe Rights of Man to Property!He argued for common ownership of large-scale means of production, universal public education, a debt jubilee, and land redistribution. He called for the abolition of private inheritance with estates going into a public fund for distribution of a share to each person upon adulthood. He called not only for the abolition of slavery but for reparations, for land and a share of the nations wealth to the former slaves to help them get started on their farms. He called for citizenship for American Indians and suffrage and equal rights for women. With an eye to environmental protection, he decried the destruction of the planets resources that would eventually result from capitalisms promotion of the unrestricted use of unlimited private property.

This Red tradition of socialism can be seen as a way to recover the ecological sustainability that the Green tradition of May Day rejoiced and sanctified. It will take the full political and economic democracy of socialism to give the people the power to choose ecological balance instead of being powerless subjects of capitalisms competitive structural drive for the blind, relentless growth that devours the environment. Hence Green Party activists often describe their perspective as ecological socialism.

The Red tradition of May Day emerged in the 1880s in the United States. It arose out of the workers movement fighting for the same kinds of demands that the Workies had raised in 1829. The immediate impetus came from the Haymarket Massacre in 1886. On the night of May 4, 1886, 176 Chicago police attacked about 200 workers who remained after a day-long demonstration for the 8-hour day. The police fired live ammunition, killing four and wounding 70. Somebody threw a stick of dynamite. Eight of the labor organizers were charged and convicted. Four of them were hung to death. One of the Haymarket martyrs, Albert Parsons, a white former confederate soldier married to Lucy Parsons, a former slave of African, Indian, and Mexican descent, said at this trial, What is Socialism or Anarchism? Briefly stated it is the right of the toilers to the free and equal use of the tools of production and the right of the producers to their product.

Lucy Parsons campaigned across the United States and Europe to have the workers movement commemorate May 1 as International Workers Day. Many workers organizations supported her call, including the American Federation of Labor, which then urged its adoption by the Second International of socialist parties. The first international May Day celebration in 1890 was a big success. The demonstrations worried the establishments across the world. After Coxeys Army descended on May 1, 1894, in the first mass march on Washington, D.C. to demand public works spending to employ the unemployed in the midst of severe depression, President Grover Cleveland got Congress to declare a federal Labor Day holiday in September in a move designed to divide the labor movement.

Green Party members will be joining with other working peoples organizations to commemorate International Workers Day this year online given the social distancing we must practice in this coronavirus pandemic. What Greens can do to bring to these events is an understanding of the connections between the Red and Green traditions of May Day.

Conservatives try to red-bait Greens as watermelons green on the outside but red on the inside. But we dont take that as an insult. We will be on the ballot line in November as the Green Party, but there is plenty of Red as well as Green in our platform.

This article was posted on Friday, May 1st, 2020 at 12:02am and is filed under Activism, Labor, Land Use, May Day, Opinion, Social Movements, Socialism, Solidarity, Strikes, Unions, Working Class.

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May Day is Red and Green - Dissident Voice

Antonio Barreca, one of the key figures in Italy's travel and tourism industry, talks to Wanted in Rome about what challenges the country's tourism faces as a result of the coronavirus lockdown.

by Marco Venturini

Federturismo is the National Business Federation of the Travel and Tourism Industry of Confindustria, and represents the entire production chain of the tourism industry.

The federation includes 20 different productive sectors, that range from hotels, spas, beach establishments, ski lifts, travel retail, marinas, transport (airports, buses, trains, car rentals), amusement parks, entertainment companies, travel agencies, tour operators, currency exchange, tax- free shopping, fairs, conferences and catering.

Federturismo is an association of companies, and as such represents their interests within the government and parliament in a spirit of constant dialogue and collaboration.

The Italian tourism industry has 4.2 million employees and an annual turnover of 232 billion, equal to 13 per cent of the nations GDP. Tourism represents the economic engine of entire regions of our country, now totally at a standby. Its a sector with an incredibly valuable heritage that must be preserved, enhanced and made competitive. More importantly, in this moment of emergency in which all productive categories are blocked and will probably not restart even after the lockdown has been lifted, it must receive help.

The situation is dramatic. Already in March, at the beginning of the emergency, the overall losses were estimated at around 30 billion, but now there are fears that they may also double, reaching 60 billion. Not to mention the 500,000 seasonal workers that should have been hired in this moment, and who have not yet seen the start of their contracts. Many of them live an entire year on the work of the summer months, and have problems accessing NASPI, a monthly unemployment allowance.

They are all in the same situation, none excluded, even if the airlines, transport and accommodation facilities are the ones that are paying the higher price. Tourism was one of the first industries to be hit by the coronavirus crisis where travel restrictions and cancellations led to an almost complete halt to international and domestic tourism. All the bookings we had, as a country, were all cancelled.

Businesses need to start again, quickly and safely. Along with UNI, the Italian Unification Board, we have agreed to open a technical tourism table in order to develop a first series of useful guidelines for businesses, that will gradually reopen in view of the summer season.

We are working to develop, within the general rules on workplace safety defined at national and international levels, the protocols to which all tourism companies must adapt in order to guarantee and offer their services in the safest way possible for workers and customers.

Having said this, government intervention will be necessary in any case. We must be sure that the lost profits will not force companies to close.

A return to normal is not going to happen soon, especially if we think of international customers which make up half of our market.

This summer in Italy, we will not be able to rely on international tourism, which contributes 51 per cent of the bookings in hotels and accommodation facilities. We trust in the internal market, even if we are worried about the spending capacity of our fellow Italians. There is a possibility that many of them will have to work during the summer, as their vacation days were used up due to the fact that companies have leaned on this method to ground themselves during the pandemic.

We must also consider that the structures that will reopen, in order to guarantee social distancing, will necessarily work at 30-35 per cent of their usual capacity.

It is inevitable that the way of doing tourism will be turned upside down.

Although it is difficult now to be able to make predictions, we can still assume that in the reboot phase, forms of travel mainly concentrated in Italy and of short-medium range will be preferred. A kind of tourism that will go for smaller and less crowded destinations and open air activities. As well as individual trips for couples and families.

In this climate of profound uncertainty, Italians are not booking their holidays and those who have done so previously, have cancelled their booking. But, the summer holidays must be saved and the message to convey is that you can go on holiday despite the virus, you just need to be equipped and follow the instructions that will soon be given by the competent authorities.

It will be proximity tourism: by the sea, in the mountains or in the villages. The important thing is that Italians start travelling again.

Certainly the pandemic crisis, with the blocking of flights and the fear of infections, will make the arrival of foreign tourists in Italy very difficult. However, they must be reminded that they all can book with the guarantee of not losing anything, as they will always be refunded. The government has set regulations on how to make refunds, and tourism companies will respect them with great responsibility.

In this critical phase of health emergency, but also a socio-economic one, companies need a quick and decisive intervention to support their business and a push to restart. For this reason, we have asked the government for a package of measures, such as the abolition of taxes for the whole of 2020, a tax credit on rent for hotels and tour operators, and extraordinary funds dedicated to tourism along with the simplification of the application of social safety nets.

The government must show that it has understood the seriousness of the situation, and we expect special measures to help us face the situation.

Since July 2011 Antonio Barreca has been the director general of Federturismo, the Italian National Federation of the Travel and Tourism Industry which is part of Confindustria (the Italian employers' confederation). He served in 2014 as a senior advisor for tourism for Sicily. He has been a member of the Tourism Sustainability Group of the European Commission since February 2011, and the vice president of the tourism committee at the Italian Organization for Standardization (UNI), an association that publishes standards for industrial, commercial and tertiary sectors.

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What does the future look like for Italian Tourism - Wanted in Rome