Job Rant, part two

As one would expect from the title, this is a follow up to Job Rant, part one

So after eight months, I've decided to give up my job search and accept the fact that working for myself is my only option. I'm actually fine like this. I write, I teach, I translate. It’s a varied schedule and I like it. I am at my computer at the crack of dawn and I’m still here when the sun goes down, but I’m happier.

The bigger reason for the official end of my job search is that I have little respect for Italian working life and I’m choosing to opt out. For so long I held on to that American idea of "If I just work hard enough, I will naturally get ahead!" and that does not necessarily fly here. Often it’s the boss’s son (or the son of a friend of a friend of the boss) who gets hired or promoted and not the best person for the job. Italian parents are obsessed with having their adult children "sistemati," which is a concept that does not translate well but it basically means that parents want to see their children in a stable job (that they may or may not like, but who cares if it’s "stable!") for life that offers a salary, generous vacation and all the trimmings. I do not have parents – or anyone here, for that matter – pushing to get me "sistemata" but it’s such a foreign concept to me, I can’t imagine trying to get work that way. I want to find work where I’m appreciated for my skill not because I’m so-and-so’s daughter. And that makes me seem very naive here.

The huge problem here right now is that the system is changing from the old-style "job for life" concept where you could never be fired even if they caught you with your hand in the till. People who were hired even up to a few years ago tend to have those contracts, and they don’t want to give them up. At the same time, companies have discovered "freelance" workers – typically new college graduates – who are not actually freelance at all in the American sense of the word. When I worked freelance in the U.S. I was paid generously because I had to pay my own insurance and benefits, etc. In Italy, freelancers and interns are low-paid (or unpaid) apprentices who continue on like that for years and years with elusive "hired contract" dangled out in front of them as incentive. They do the same job as the hired people (who have generous vacation, unlimited sick leave, government pension and days off for even the most ridiculous reasons, such as "celebration of town patron saint day") but have absolutely no benefits.

Anyway, I don’t see it changing as there are too many people with those old contracts that offer an endless number of protections that Italians just don't want to give up even if it means fairer contracts for all. A woman who is hired here can take the first several years of her child’s life off and then when she does come back to work she can arrive later and leave earlier because she gets "breast feeding time" (I’ve seen mothers of five-year-olds "milk" – excuse the pun but I couldn’t help myself! – this, leaving work early because they have to go home and "breast feed"). I guess that is great for the women who are hired but what about all of the female workers who do not have hired contracts? Often they are let go when the company finds out they are pregnant. No long leisurely maternity leave and breast-feeding time for them. So it’s a system that heaps more protections on the protected and punishes those who began working in this new "freelance" era that has not meant flexibility but precariousness. Even if I were able to find a job now (as a woman in my 30s and thus – in the company’s eyes – ripe for a big long maternity leave), I would never, ever be hired but would be offered freelance contracts like those mentioned in part one of this job rant.