Attack on Giants: The Unions and the Titans of Culture
Mattia Cavani
This is a translation of ‘Il Sindacato e i Colossi della Cultura
’, the address I gave at the ‘Attacco alla Cultura’ (Attack on Culture) conference organised by Slc-Cgil (Italy’s largest union in the communications and cultural sectors) in Milan on 5 December.
Thanks to everyone who organized this meeting. In one of the earlier talks it was said that when we talk about culture we risk always finding the same people repeating the same things. I will try to say something different.
I start from the experience of Redacta , the section of Acta created with the aim of carrying out union action in a particular sector: book publishing.
In Italy the publishing industry is worth about three‑and‑a‑half billion euros and, for at least forty years, has been a testing ground for the most extreme forms of outsourcing and precarization. When we founded Redacta in 2019, we were in an industry that demanded high qualifications (master’s degrees, specialized training, etc.) while offering very low fees, and therefore very low incomes . This situation was the result of the fact that we, as freelancers, were negotiating the content and price of our work by ourselves.
Toward mass individual bargaining
Thus, a situation that differs from those we have seen this morning [performing arts and cinema], because in book publishing public funding is minimal. Sure, the Meloni government has messed up the funding for libraries, but book publishing is an industry where most of the money comes from private companies.
I won’t tell you the whole story of Redacta, but in short we have combined inquiries and the direct involvement of workers to create a mutualistic space for sharing information about the market and the profession: rates, types of contracts, rights… All things that before Redacta everyone kept to themselves in their own little room, knowing nothing about what others were doing. Now, instead, it is possible to do what we call “mass individual bargaining” – to negotiate with companies while backed by a supportive network and a shared wealth of knowledge.
In this way we have disproven the traditional idea that freelancers are stronger the more they keep market and professional information to themselves. In reality our problem was that workers did not talk to one another, and therefore companies could easily take advantage of them.
So we have overcome isolation, spread awareness, carried out specific actions against individual publishers such as Il Saggiatore , and finally we have come to define decent compensations: we hosted meetings between freelancers, employees, micro‑enterprises and together we wrote a Guide that contains the precise description of the main tasks of our work and their respective decent compensation.
After six years, we can say that we are fairly satisfied. More and more people are following and participating in our efforts, and greater awareness is spreading among workers in this sector, especially among the younger generation. We are increasingly managing to reach them before they enter the market by delivering lectures at universities. We have also seen some companies change their bad practices. For a wholly voluntary union effort, that’s not bad.
How we can(‘t) bargain with a monopsony
However, no matter how well we do our work, we run into a rather important limit: the concentration of companies. A problem of the cultural sector that we have not yet touched on this morning, but which is decisive.
Let me explain: when a few companies control a substantial part of the market, they exercise their power not only over the prices (and quality) of products and services, but also over workers. If on one side we speak of monopoly, this is called monopsony: a small number of “buyers of labour” manage to obtain overly favourable conditions from workers.
This enormous difference in bargaining power is very relevant in direct negotiations between freelancers and companies, but it also has indirect effects along the supply chain. For example, book distribution in Italy is extremely concentrated. It pockets more than 50% of the cover price of books from independent publishers, who then recover their margin by grotesquely compressing labour costs.
Another limitation on what we can do is the fact that, until 2022, collective bargaining by freelancers was considered a form of cartel and a violation of EU antitrust rules — a joke that only made Brussels laugh for years. These orientations have changed. But the problem remains and it has made the imbalance of negotiating power with companies even worse.
When we need Antitrust
We brought these same arguments to the AGCM, the Italian Antitrust Authority, which in 2024 opened an investigation into the textbook market (where four large groups control 80% of the market). The Antitrust authority conducted its investigation in a ’traditional’ way, i.e. by examining the impact of concentration on consumers. Our aim was to demonstrate that labour is also affected by the negative effects of concentration.
How did we do it? By activating the network of contacts we have built over these years, we asked our members to send us the contracts (a significant demonstration of trust) they had signed with these large groups. Upon analysing the contracts, we verified that the same abusive clauses were present in the contracts of the major groups, including non-competition clauses, indiscriminate transfer of copyright and derisory or non-existent royalties for authors etc. Therefore, we could tell the Authority that the fact that all the large groups impose the same abusive clauses appears to us to be an antitrust issue.
Without going into too much detail, we held a formal hearing, the outcome of which was included in the preliminary report. What could come of it?
I must first tell you a sad story. The Statute of Autonomous Work, which came into force in 2017 and to which Acta contributed substantially, contains an article (Article 3) that renders abusive clauses imposed unilaterally null and void . Unfortunately, due to the significant power imbalance between freelancers and companies, this article has remained largely ineffective.
So, what could our action with the Antitrust achieve? Currently, there is a possibility that the Authority may remedy the flaw in Article 3 by reserving the right to examine contracts in the textbook sector and directly annul oppressive clauses. This would be an interesting deterrent mechanism that could set a precedent for freelancers in all industries.
We are waiting confidently for the final report. In the meantime, I recommend reading the Antitrust Authority’s preliminary report , which describes in great detail how the digitisation of textbooks, encouraged by laws probably intended to be beneficial, has been completely hijacked for the benefit of larger companies, contributing to the progressive concentration of the market.
This story has taught us that cooperation between trade union organisations and antitrust authorities can be useful in addressing the issue of concentration.
This remains a minority view, however, as historically unions have viewed antitrust with suspicion for good reason (there is a wealth of literature on the subject). However, as labour law scholar Wenwen Ding recently argued at the Università Statale in Milan, there are excellent reasons to consider unions, labour law and antitrust law as complementary tools for intervention. This is an approach that we have also adopted.
Moreover, I do not think this approach is useful only for publishing.
The giants of the cultural sectors
Let’s consider the significant concentration of power in the audiovisual industry. A few years ago, in an interview for our research ‘Dietro le quinte’ (Behind the curtains: an inquiry on freelance work in publishing and audiovisual), Italian film production companies were described as ‘healthy carriers of tax credits’ for major US platforms. In this industry, it is difficult to imagine that the effects of the overwhelming power of Netflix and Amazon do not trickle down to workers.
[Coincidences do not exist, but during the conference, Netflix made its move to buy Warner Bros.]
Or consider popular music. The global record market is dominated by three labels, which also hold significant shares in Spotify. Spotify controls most of the streaming market, and this has consequences for the royalties not paid to artists . In the Italian context, Ticketone (controlled by the German CTS Eventim) dominates ticket sales. According to an Antitrust investigation in 2021 , it strengthened its grip on the sector through some creative manoeuvres by intertwining control of tickets and venues. The investigation is still interesting to read, even though the related fines were annulled by a Regional Administrative Court, as often happens. Since then, concert ticket prices have risen significantly , with the proceeds largely going to the same seller. Do you think this has no cascading effects on the entire supply chain? Does the show-business worker who asks a local promoter for a pay rise not feel the weight of this concentration?
I could give other examples, from online advertising being dominated by Meta and Google to software: Adobe has a de facto monopoly on editorial layout software, and the monthly subscription to InDesign is constantly increasing — workers have no say in this negotiation either. But I think I have made my point.