A bitter battle over museum ticketing companies in Florence has sparked protests and authorized challenges, with unions accusing Italy’s tradition ministry of prioritising income over jobs. Amid ongoing strikes and political outcry, an Italian court docket has upheld a call to entrust ticketing at a number of the metropolis’s most visited museums, together with the Gallerie degli Uffizi and the Galleria dell’Accademia, to a brand new supplier.
For 21 years, Opera Laboratori Fiorentini, a significant museum companies firm using 1,000 folks, managed ticketing, outreach and bookshops on the Uffizi, Palazzo Pitti, Opificio delle Pietre Dure (a famend artwork restoration establishment) and the Polo Museale Regione Toscana, which incorporates the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo in Florence. However in Might 2023, the agency misplaced a public tender to Coop-Tradition, a companies firm that already oversees ticketing at Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli and the Valley of the Temples in Agrigento, Sicily.
In January, the regional administrative court docket for Tuscany rejected appeals towards the choice by Ati Giunti Editore, the publishing home that owns Opera Laboratori and Primo Nomine, a Spanish companies supplier that ranked second within the tender. CoopCulture was anticipated to signal a five-year contract in early March price €121,000 per 12 months.
An additional attraction by a 3rd firm, Vivaticket, remains to be pending, and Opera Laboratori and Primo Nomine are reportedly contemplating taking their case to the Council of State, Italy’s highest administrative court docket.
Since profitable the bid, CoopCulture has introduced that it could reabsorb solely a few of Opera Laboratori’s Florence workers working on the 4 museums, beneath the identical contractual situations. Different staff can be re-employed by a separate supplier beneath similar salaries. CoopCulture can be anticipated to eradicate a €4 ticket reserving cost, beforehand used to finance extra workers wanted to maintain some museum rooms open.
The proposed modifications have sparked unrest. In November, dozens of museum staff protested outdoors Florence’s Palazzo Vecchio. “Ensures for the continuity of full employment, pay, and contracts for all workers should be made,” commerce unionists stated in a press assertion on the time.
Authorized appeals pending
In the meantime, uncertainty looms over the Galleria dell’Accademia and the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, which have been introduced beneath single administration final 12 months. The tradition ministry revoked Opera Laboratori’s ticketing contract for these establishments final summer season, elevating considerations about the way forward for 90 extra staff. Ales, an in-house companies supplier for the tradition ministry, has been chosen to take over ticketing operations.
In distinction with its earlier ruling, on 9 October, the regional court docket upheld a separate attraction by AtiGiunti Editore towards the number of Ales, ruling that Opera Laboratori ought to proceed overseeing ticketing till a scheduled public listening to on 5 March. Ati Giunti Editore argued that appointing a separate firm for ticketing alone would result in a decline in total service high quality.
The opposition Democratic Occasion has accused the federal government of utilizing cultural heritage as a money cow. “We have now submitted quite a few calls for for clarification from [culture] Minister Giuli, with out receiving enough solutions,” stated Laura Rimi and Giachi Cristina, regional Democratic Occasion councillors, at a November protest. “We’re more and more involved in regards to the authorities’s insufficient administration of cultural heritage.”
Opera Laboratori tells The Artwork Newspaper it is not going to remark till the court docket has dominated on Vivaticket’s attraction. On the time of writing, CoopCulture had not responded to a request for remark.
