Disability or different ability? Around this rhetorical question, which may seem to have a trivial answer, develops the entire narrative of the various phases in which the project funded by the European Commission (VS/2019/0048) was articulated. The main objective of the project was to encourage joint action by EWCs and trade unions for the inclusive development of diversity in human resources management. In order to achieve this objective, the main idea of the project was the proposal of a disability manager within the EWCs of the credit multinationals with the main task of developing and supervising all the activities that are useful for the inclusion in the workplace of people with disabilities.
Returning to the initial question that started our initiative, i.e., disability or differ-ent ability, it is clear that the two words imply meanings and cultures that are much more opposed than they might seem at first.
In ancient civilisations, disability was seen as a divine punishment for faults com-mitted by the individual or their ancestors and was therefore regarded as an evil that had to be, in the best of cases, isolated so as not to contaminate the ‘good’
part of society. Greek and Roman cultures discriminated against disabled people, who were often abandoned and left without care. A transcendent concept of disability also prevailed in Jewish society, and the disabled person was often con-sidered indispensable to the manifestation of the divine presence: this creed was so rooted in the society that in the case of physical healing, disability became a synonym for healing from sin. The same tradition can be found again in the New Testament, for example, in the episode of the leper (1) who is healed where Jesus does not just heal physically the leper but, in observance of the law of Moses, invites the man to go to the temple and present himself to the priest, thus ob-taining the purification of his soul and resuming his place in the community.
In mediaeval society – and, in many aspects, also in the 17th and 18th century society – the disabled person is represented through an image that is denied, or at least devalued, often concealed (for what concerns the body), stigmatised and socially marginalized (2).
(1) Gospel of Mark 1, 40-45.
(2) In the late Middle Ages, a depiction of the plight of people who did not fit into the notions of ‘normality’ is described in Sebastian Brant’s satirical work Das Narrenschiff, which gave rise to the legend of the ship that sailed the waterways of the Rhineland and Flanders, picking up disabled and insane people and taking them from one city to another.
It is with the Modern Age, but above all with the beginning of the 20th century, that studies made a great contribution to the theme of knowledge of disability in its medical and anthropological aspects thanks to the contribution of new tools and new philosophical conceptions. An effective impulse came from research in the field of neuroscience, with the analysis of mind-body connections and the consequent development of a more rigorous approach from a scientific point of view. At the same time, the role of the body in the development of the potential and training processes of the disabled person is enhanced, making them more self-aware through a process of acceptance of a diversity no longer experienced as a stigma, but internalised and shown as one of the characteristics of one’s individuality, capable of making important and significant contributions to the community.
This slow but steady process is also clear in the world of work, where there has been a shift from an approach that has been described as ‘welfarist’ or even ‘pi-etistic’ (especially with regard to recruitment policies by both public and private companies) to an approach that is based on the inclusion and the enhancement of diversity.
The turning point was the European Framework Directive 89/391/EEC, that is what Iodice rightly calls the ‘mother Directive’, the result of a fruitful European period for workers’ rights. Art. 6 (General Obligations of Employers), letter d, states:
“adapt work to man, particularly as regards the design of workplaces and the choice of work equipment, work and production methods”.
The spread of technologies linked to digitalisation has provided the tools to make it easier for people with disabilities to realise the principles outlined above. More-over, Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the widespread diffusion of the digiti-sation process to small and medium-sized enterprises as well, especially in the form of distance working, which represents an effective tool for the inclusion of fragile people in the world of production.
However, Marco Pronello, in his intervention in § 2.7 of this volume, rightly warns against the dangers of ‘segregation’ of the disabled worker by companies, inherent in the uncontrolled use of remote work. Pronello gives the Disability Manager the responsibility for ensuring that this does not happen, providing mo-ments of interaction with colleagues in the work groups within the company.
The volume that I have the pleasure of presenting tells the story of the project through the testimonies of the protagonists, starting with the introduction writ-ten by the Project Manager, Giacinto Palladino, and continuing with the philo-sophical, cultural and legal assumptions exhaustively treated in the Chapter 1 by Domenico Iodice, editor of the volume.
Due to the six-month extension granted by the European Commission because of the pandemic, the activities ran from 1 February 2019 to 31 July 2021, i.e., 30 months of intense work made up of debates, interpersonal relations, research into ‘good practices’, desk analyses and surveys and field checks. The objectives
set during the planning stage were largely achieved and the ex post results were, in terms of quality and quantity, far superior to what had been envisaged before-hand. This was by no means a foregone conclusion, mainly due to difficulties arising from the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, which forced the identifica-tion of alternatives to face-to-face meetings to ensure continuity of acidentifica-tion.
The project team of Paola Vinciguerra, Anna Masiello and Antonio Masciale faced the difficult task of devising an alternative plan to the one envisaged that would take into account the mobility restrictions imposed by governments due to the pandemic. The project was originally based on face-to-face meetings be-tween partners, experts and actors in the European social dialogue, in order to enrich interpersonal relations, an important factor aimed at exchanging experi-ences and good practices. This has been replaced by distance meetings on digital platforms and online conferences. Particularly challenging was the preparation and web-based management of the Training Course which entailed a redesigning of all the related activities, as extensively described in Chapter 3. We can say that this challenge was faced and overcome by the staff members, with the active participation of all partners and experts involved.
In Chapter 2, I highlight the contribution of Sarah Copsey from EU-OSHA (Eu-ropean Agency for Safety and Health at Work) on safe and healthy working con-ditions in the workplace as a prerequisite for retaining workers with chronic ill-nesses and disabilities and making their engagement sustainable throughout their working lives. Making workplaces accessible and inclusive, Copsey adds, benefits everyone and consequently reduces the need for specific measures for individu-als, and the worker with a disability should therefore not suffer the stigma of requiring ad personam treatments.
Of particular interest were the testimonies of Banca Intesa, in the person of Patrizia Ordasso, and UniCredit with Emanuele Recchia and Francesca Bonsi Magnoni on the subject of the prerogatives of the figure of the ‘Disability Man-ager’ within large banking groups. The testimony of Gianluca Reggioni of the Crédit Agricole Italia Banking Group concerns the FReD project, linked to the company’s CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) policies and, in particular, to the Persone Speciali programme focused on people with disabilities in their work-ing life cycle, encouragwork-ing positive actions to prevent early exclusion.
The cycle of testimonies was enriched by the interventions of Marino D’Angelo and Veronica Rogialli. D’Angelo presented the main activities of Abili Oltre, a non-profit organisation that promotes training and information opportunities to encourage women and men of all ages with disabilities or disadvantages to enter the world of work with equal dignity. Rogialli presents BB S.p.A., a company operating in the industry of fashion and luxury products that makes inclusion policies a fundamental, effective and significant choice: 30% of its employees have health problems or belong to fragile categories. However, he writes, this does not represent a brake on individual productivity intended as an impediment
to carrying out one’s work duties, but rather as the natural response of a collab-orative working community, which values the contribution of each individual for the collective good of the company.
Marco Pronello, whom we have already mentioned above, closes the cycle of testimonies. On the basis of his experience, he talks about the role of the Disa-bility Manager in terms of effectiveness and precision, characterising him with
“the role and managerial framework of facilitator in the relationships between the organisation and its internal and, in fact, also external stakeholders: people with disabilities and frailties”.
The second part of the book, which I invite you to read carefully, presents, on the basis of the analyses and debates carried out during the thirty months of activity of the project, a series of ‘policy recommendations’ to be submitted to the European Commission, in order to give effectiveness and finality to the work done.
Among the proposals, in addition to the inclusion of the role of the ‘Disability Manager’ within the EWCs, there is the one about adjusting the aforementioned Framework Directive with its admonition “adapt work to man” to the times of digitalisation.
The proposal, in the case of the use of digital platforms, is that of “using a dif-ferent algorithm, built for the characteristics of the disadvantaged worker”, de-veloping “new rating systems, negotiated and adapted to man […] overcoming the limit of space and time of the work performance” in this way “the digital platform would extend, prolong and dilate the characteristics of strength of workers with disabilities and/or elderly workers, making them differently pre-sent”.
This invitation to man centrality over technology recalls Sophocles’ tragedy, Phil-octetes, the Greek hero with a disability, abandoned by Odysseus on his way to Troy, on the island of Lemnos, precisely because he was considered useless in the war, despite his reputation as the best Greek archer. Odysseus – in this trag-edy, a negative hero – on the basis of a subsequent prophecy wants to take pos-session of Philoctetes’ portentous bow, betting, one might say, on technology and not on the abilities of the man who uses it.
Odysseus’ attempts to take possession of the portentous ‘technological instru-ment’ fail and the tragedy has a happy ending with the young son of Achilles, an example of solidarity and inclusion, who goes to Lemno to retrieve Philoctetes, bringing him out of the solitude in which he had been forced because of his infirmity. The two set off for Troy where, thanks to his ‘different skills’ in the use of the bow, Philoctetes contributes to the victory of the Greeks.
The story of the disabled warrior recounted some 2,600 years ago by Sophocles is an extraordinary, and perhaps not popular, example of the inclusion of diver-sity and of solidarity between two individuals who together, by compensating each other, achieve a goal. There is a strong connection with the experience
narrated by Rogialli of the BB spa company when she writes “BB is conceived as a community of people who aim at the common good of society and of the people who are part of it. Thanks to this community dimension, people work to help each other”.
Finally, while I am warmly inviting you to read this interesting volume, I would like to thank all those who made the Project possible. Above all, I would like to thank the National Secretariat of First Cisl, in the person of Riccardo Colombani, General Secretary, who strongly believed in this experience, providing the struc-ture and resources necessary to achieve the ambitious objectives. I would like to thank Banca Popolare Etica, co-presenter of the project, for its cooperation and the personal contribution of Adriano Pallaro. Thanks also to Luciano Malvolti, who handled relations with the European partners and managed the Virtual àgora, the virtual place where all the information, studies and comments of the entire project passed through. Also, thanks to the partners who actively partici-pated in all phases of the project. Trade unions: Federation CFDT des Banques et Assurances (France), Odborovy Zvaz Pracovnikov Penaznictva a Poist’ovnic-tva (Slovakia), Financial Services Union Denmark (Denmark), ZOOS OSPPP (Czech Republic), Confederation of Free Trade Unions of North Macedonia (North Macedonia), Zwiazec Zawodowy Pracownikow UBIS (Poland); the NGO Associations: Federmanagement (Italy), Abili Oltre Associazione No-Profit (Italy), First Social Life (Italy); the EWCs: UniCredit EWC (Italy), Crédit Agricole EWC (France), Danske Unions EWC (Denmark), Generali Group EWC (Italy). Finally, thanks to the European Trade Union Federation: UNI Global Union Europe.
The activities of the various project phases were complex due to the wide trans-nationality which, while on the one hand represented an irreplaceable asset, on the other hand produced an authentic linguistic Babel, brilliantly overcome thanks to the interpreting services coordinated by Carmelo Donato.
Finally, special thanks to Marilena Furio who, as usual, with tight deadlines and the difficulties of a specialised language, took on the burden of the English trans-lation.