SAN MARINO – May Day is an opportunity to put work back at the centre: not as an abstract theme, but as a concrete question of dignity, income, rights and the future.
Today the job market is changing at an unprecedented speed. Artificial intelligence is opening a different phase from previous waves of automation: it does not only impact repetitive tasks, but also cognitive work, skilled professions, the organization of companies and decision-making processes.
For USL the question is not whether change will come. The change has already arrived. The real question is whether workers will have to suffer it or will be able to govern it.
Innovation can be a great opportunity, but only if accompanied by rules, training, bargaining and new protections. Without these tools, the risk is that artificial intelligence becomes a factor in the impoverishment of work, increased burdens, psychological pressure and weakening of rights.
In this scenario, training must be recognized as a full and permanent right. Not a cost to be postponed, but an essential condition to allow workers to remain protagonists and not be excluded from technological changes.
The issue especially concerns young people. We cannot accept that the new generations look at work with distrust. Too many young people, even qualified ones, struggle to become independent, leave their families and build a life of their own, because salaries and prospects are no longer adequate to the real cost of living. If many choose to look for opportunities elsewhere, it means that the system needs to seriously question itself.
But fragility also concerns those who lose their jobs and struggle to relocate, especially as they age. Even when a new job arrives, it often starts with lower wages and fewer guarantees, with increasingly weak purchasing power and still insufficient welfare.
All this also affects productivity. A worker who does not see his commitment recognized, who perceives merit as irrelevant and does not see concrete prospects, will hardly be able to feel motivated. Productivity does not arise from fear, but from respect, participation and the valorization of skills.
“It is understandable to look with fear at what we still do not fully know – states the General Secretary of USL, Francesca Busignani – but we cannot allow artificial intelligence to become a boomerang for workers. Technology can be an extraordinary tool, but it must remain at the service of people. Human work is thought, creativity, responsibility, relationships and the ability to choose: elements that no algorithm can erase”.
“The challenge – concludes Busignani – is not to retreat before the future, but to govern it. We need fairer wages, real training, new protections and contracts capable of reading the present. On this May Day, USL renews its commitment so that progress is not built against workers, but together with them”. Happy First May to all workers.
