Born and raised in the same place in South­ern Sardinia, we, Valentina and Annal­isa, dis­covered some time ago that we share sim­ilar research interests in work and pre­cari­ous employ­ment. Sur­pris­ingly enough, we would add, as we lost sight of each other after school and met again ten years later, after hav­ing lived and stud­ied in dif­fer­ent coun­tries. So we meet from time to time and share our views on what’s going on, and it was on one such occa­sion when, in a sup­posedly Irish pub of this sup­posedly exotic island, we con­fessed to each other how much we were dis­turbed by some­thing we had noticed at a local super­mar­ket. Valentina remembered hav­ing stared in dis­be­lief at a flier whilst at the check­out, inad­vert­ently slow­ing down a long line of unsur­prised and numb buy­ers; Annal­isa had kept the same flier in her wal­let for months, just in case was any­one she encountered not yet aware of the ‘thing’.

This is the story in brief: in 2009, a Sardinian chain of super­mar­kets, called Despar/Sigma, launched the com­pet­i­tion: ‘Win your job’. To be eli­gible to par­ti­cip­ate, one needed only to do a shop worth 30 Euros (or mul­tiples thereof). In exchange for each 30 Euro spend, the cus­tomer received a ticket. If selec­ted in the sub­sequent lot­tery they would win one of 48 one-year job con­tracts with the super­mar­ket chain avail­able that year. To be eli­gible to work, inter­change­ably, as a cash­ier or on the counter, the only qual­i­fic­a­tion required was an age one: to be between 18 and 29 of age, rising to 32 if clas­si­fi­able as in long-term unemployment.

What a non Italian reader needs to know is that it is com­mon for Italian super­mar­kets to keep cli­ents close by giv­ing them little gifts, the eco­nomic value of which depends on how much they have spent in a given time. So, what’s dif­fer­ent here? Some may ask. The more you buy, the bet­ter your chances of win­ning a job. And win­ning a job is after all ‘more use­ful’ than ‘win­ning a pot’ ! In addi­tion, what a non Italian reader may not be aware of is that Sardinia is not only an exotic island in the heart of the Medi­ter­ranean Sea but is also an eco­nom­ic­ally depressed area with unem­ploy­ment rate of 45 per cent for 15–29 year olds.

So, whilst being bom­barded by tal­ent shows and TV pro­grammes of all sorts show­ing us how to become suc­cess­ful, even how to get a ‘nor­mal’ job , we are now presen­ted with the oppor­tun­ity to build our work­ing lives through a lot­tery. As soci­olo­gists, we are inev­it­ably left with a range of ques­tions: what does it tell us that a selec­tion pro­cess based on skills and exper­i­ence is so blatantly anni­hil­ated? Is it the high rate of youth unem­ploy­ment that explains the appar­ent devalu­ation of work as a centre of one’s iden­tity? And does any­one care about the fact that a young per­son might want to go for a job which is in line with their per­sonal aspir­a­tions, plans, even voca­tion, which might – or might not — include obtain­ing a super­mar­ket job? And why should people’s achieve­ments in secur­ing work count for noth­ing in those cases when they not pub­li­cised, turned into an event, made into some­thing extraordin­ary as for the win­ners of this lottery?

In recent years, the title of Gallino’s (2007) book, ‘Il lavoro non è una merce’ (Work is not a com­mod­ity), has rep­res­en­ted the work of Italian soci­ology well, in its engage­ment with norm­at­ive debates about the dig­nity of work, and bound­ar­ies to com­modi­fic­a­tion and flex­ib­il­iz­a­tion in order to ensure accept­able stand­ards for work­ing people. Des­pite this anim­ated dis­cus­sion, which has partly res­on­ated with European schol­arly debates and, even more inter­est­ingly, has gone along with pain­ful trans­form­a­tions towards increas­ing flex­ib­il­iz­a­tion in the legal sys­tem in Italy, we have wit­nessed some sur­pris­ing reac­tions to the ‘Win a job’ lottery.

There has been no pub­lic objec­tion by the local uni­ons. It has been repor­ted that older people have been seen donat­ing the 30 Euro tick­ets to young people in the check­out line, wish­ing them luck. We have heard from young people wor­ried only that the jobs won may not be real­ised, and that a one year con­tract was ulti­mately not a good enough solu­tion to long term unem­ploy­ment. Nobody seems to have con­tested the rationale of the com­pet­i­tion. For the rest, so far so good. Such a sym­path­etic reac­tion has gal­van­ized the pro­moter of the ini­ti­at­ive, brought good money to the super­mar­ket chain, and ‘pampered’ some real social problems.

This is an oppor­tun­ity to reflect on the range of views on how lucky one should be in win­ning a job and what this tells us about con­tem­por­ary Sardinian soci­ety, or other sim­ilar places. Is it simply the case that the need to work for a liv­ing cuts what could be a long story short? And what should the role of soci­olo­gists and uni­ons be in all this? We feel there is plenty to dis­cuss still — per­haps at our next meeting.

Ref­er­ences
Luciano Gallino, Il lavoro non è una merce, Roma, Laterza 2007.