In Prato, Italy this summer, immigrant workers at 70 different textile and garment factories won the right for a 40-hour work week. Their fight involved 14 weeks of ongoing “strike days,” where the workers walked out together with the help of the union SUDD Cobas (“Union Democracy, Dignity Union”).
Prato is a city well known for its fashion production, with exports, generating more than 2 billion euros ($2.3 billion) per year. However, behind the glamour, the city and its fashion industry rely on extremely exploitative conditions. They use the vulnerability of immigrants coming from around the world to push for 14-hour workdays, with dangerous and precarious working conditions. Over the years, attempts by workers in Prato to organize were met with union busting and other resistance by the bosses, but that didn’t stop the workers from continuing to fight for better conditions over the past seven years.
Their story is a sign of hope in a time where immigrants around the world are being used as scapegoats, and their vulnerability is being exploited to fill the pockets of the bosses.
If you want to know more, read the article written by journalists Morganne Blais-McPherson and Sarah Caudiero at Labor Notes: https://labornotes.org/blogs/2025/07/italy-immigrant-workers-launch-wave-strikes-40-hour-week.
