Dedalus and Arianna

For Maria Assunta Pirrera, EWC delegate and RSU in the Westin Palace hotel, the past can explain many things. Where you come from, what you have experienced: we need to start from here, from a father who becomes a victim of usury and loses his job; from a family who was forced to leave Sicily; from that day twenty years ago, when, in Milan, a new life started. “Right after I arrived, I found a job at the Westin Palace as a maid. I was very lucky, but also very determined. I kept my feet on the ground”, says Maria Assunta. “My parents told me: join the trade union. Then I started the militancy. I was committed to the CGIL, because I wanted my rights to be respected. It was in a way a discovery. In Milan I discovered that it was possible to live in peace, enjoy the results of your efforts without being assailed by fear.”

Today Maria Assunta Pirrera feels the need to reach an even deeper awareness, which envisions the international dimension. Since 2011, when she became a member of the EWC, she has not yet had the opportunity to concretely perform the functions she was assigned. A dialogue with the workers operating in the other branches of the Group, in Europe and in the world, is becoming more and more necessary. Working at Westin Palace is not what it used to be. At least in Italy. There used to be eight workers for the breakfast service, now there are only three. Every day roughly three hundred customers have to be served. The management does not care if they are short-staffed. The Westin is a luxury hotel and the level of professionalism must remain high. “Why is this happening? Why are Italian workers requested to make these sacrifices? Is this also happening in other countries?” Maria Assunta wonders. She wished that her voice could cross borders to share her experience and to find out about other experiences. And if you ask her what she expects from a European trade union, she answers: the basics. That is, information on rights, on their defence. And then, training. The construction of a little, potentially very influential, bulwark in a Europe, which she, like others, consider to be undemocratic. We come from the past to go very far.