A row erupts days before the start of the Eurovision Song Contest, with event organizers having sent an email to festival volunteers instructing them to bring their own lunch and eat it outside the lounge. “Dear Vip Lounge Assistants, We inform you that on the days you work in the Vip Lounge (May 10-12-14), there will be a catering service for guests only.” Read the email at the center of the controversy. «Therefore – he continues – we remind you that you will not have a buffet. We therefore ask you to organize yourself on site so that you can take a break and only leave the lounge with the food and/or drinks you have brought with you”. The announcement states that volunteers will be provided with a meal voucher as well as a uniform and a ticket for public transport.
Some politicians have taken up the issue. Andrea Russi, group leader of the 5 Star Movement, wrote to the Municipality of Turin on Facebook: “Dear Mimmo Carretta, Councilor for Major Events (of the others), it is possible to know why you have chosen to humiliate the volunteers the vip lounge this way? Couldn’t you have really tried to find a more dignified solution?”. Even Giuseppe Iannò, Torino Bellissima Councilor, defined the organization’s choice as “a sandwich apartheid with all the millions of euros invested in the event” and “a nice and good discrimination against volunteers who work without compensation”.
Iannò then stressed that it is “a real shame that young unpaid volunteers are being recruited who will have the task of receiving the 41 international delegations and various tasks such as providing information and collaborating in various ways in the organization of the Event. Nothing new under the sun – he adds – the usual dynamic of hiring volunteers in exchange for the opportunity to feel the protagonists of an international event with a “symbolic fee”: a unified, free use of public transport and a meal voucher. And here we could say metaphorically: “Here falls the donkey!” ».
