human strike
22nd October 2014, 12:51
Italy has long struggled to rid itself of its reputation as a country where the Dolce Vita takes precedence over hard graft.
However, those efforts were hampered further today when a former miner revealed he had accomplished a new masterclass in workplace skiving.
Carlo Cani, 60, who is now relaxing on his state pension, has emerged as Italys maestro of the sick note, claiming that he had worked only a handful of days during a 26-year career.
I invented everything, from amnesia to pains, to haemorrhoids and I staggered as if I was drunk, except that, thinking about it, sometimes I was drunk, Mr Cani said. He added that he spent his paid sick leave playing jazz music. I have practically never worked, he added.
Mr Cani proudly revealed that one cunning way to convince a doctor to give him a sick note was to claim claustrophobia, which prevented him from descending the shaft at the Carbosulcis coal mine where he worked in southern Sardinia.
Mr Cani told Sardinian daily La Nuova Sardegna that he had also damaged his hand by smashing it against a wall to get paid sick leave, as well as claiming to have coal dust in his eye. And my neck, he said. Months spent with a neck brace on to keep a damned neck ache at bay. But the truth is I just couldnt do it, the mine wasnt for me.
After starting work at the mine in 1980, Mr Cani was given paid leave in 1993 as the mine entered a period of crisis, and was able to stay at home without producing sick notes. In 2006, he qualified for a full state pension, despite working just a handful of days in his life.
Mr Canis proud revelations on Monday spurred hundreds of online comments from furious Sardinians and by today he was refusing to give interviews. If I think that I worked 23 years underground to give my salary to this parasite, posted Guilio Laconi, a former colleague of Mr Cani.
But if Sardinians were alarmed that Mr Cani had given a bad name to the island, his predilection for sick notes does reflect a national trend, with one study recently discovering that 30 per cent of sick leave in Italy is requested on a Monday, with Italian employees taking off over 17 days a year over three working weeks on average.
The study, using figures from 2012, found that employees in Calabria, in the toe of Italy, were the sickest of all Italians, crying off work 34.6 days a year, while staff in Trentino Alto Adige, in Italys far north, were the fittest, calling in sick 15.3 days a year.
Underground, there are people who broke their backs for years and years, who earned their salary with sweat, said Mr Cani. I respect them, but I am different, I am a jazz miner, he added.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/europe/article4243243.ece
This man is my hero.
However, those efforts were hampered further today when a former miner revealed he had accomplished a new masterclass in workplace skiving.
Carlo Cani, 60, who is now relaxing on his state pension, has emerged as Italys maestro of the sick note, claiming that he had worked only a handful of days during a 26-year career.
I invented everything, from amnesia to pains, to haemorrhoids and I staggered as if I was drunk, except that, thinking about it, sometimes I was drunk, Mr Cani said. He added that he spent his paid sick leave playing jazz music. I have practically never worked, he added.
Mr Cani proudly revealed that one cunning way to convince a doctor to give him a sick note was to claim claustrophobia, which prevented him from descending the shaft at the Carbosulcis coal mine where he worked in southern Sardinia.
Mr Cani told Sardinian daily La Nuova Sardegna that he had also damaged his hand by smashing it against a wall to get paid sick leave, as well as claiming to have coal dust in his eye. And my neck, he said. Months spent with a neck brace on to keep a damned neck ache at bay. But the truth is I just couldnt do it, the mine wasnt for me.
After starting work at the mine in 1980, Mr Cani was given paid leave in 1993 as the mine entered a period of crisis, and was able to stay at home without producing sick notes. In 2006, he qualified for a full state pension, despite working just a handful of days in his life.
Mr Canis proud revelations on Monday spurred hundreds of online comments from furious Sardinians and by today he was refusing to give interviews. If I think that I worked 23 years underground to give my salary to this parasite, posted Guilio Laconi, a former colleague of Mr Cani.
But if Sardinians were alarmed that Mr Cani had given a bad name to the island, his predilection for sick notes does reflect a national trend, with one study recently discovering that 30 per cent of sick leave in Italy is requested on a Monday, with Italian employees taking off over 17 days a year over three working weeks on average.
The study, using figures from 2012, found that employees in Calabria, in the toe of Italy, were the sickest of all Italians, crying off work 34.6 days a year, while staff in Trentino Alto Adige, in Italys far north, were the fittest, calling in sick 15.3 days a year.
Underground, there are people who broke their backs for years and years, who earned their salary with sweat, said Mr Cani. I respect them, but I am different, I am a jazz miner, he added.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/europe/article4243243.ece
This man is my hero.