National partners

Three partners participate to the VARCO Development Partnership:

Confservizi Lazio UIL di Roma e del Lazio San Giuseppe Moscati

VARCO’s project leader, Confservizi Lazio, is the regional association of enterprises, organisations and authorities for public services in the Region of Rome, Latium (Lazio).

As a whole, Confservizi Lazio’s associates’ annual production of services is worth over 5 billion euros, constituting a significant element in the economic landscape of Rome and Latium.

Confservizi Lazio

Confservizi Lazio is an active member of the national association for local public services, Confservizi. Together with many of the most important Italian multiutilities, Confservizi represents 9 federations and unions of enterprises in different fields (Assofarm, Asstra, Federambiente, Federcasa, Federculture, Federenergia, Federgasacqua, Fenasap and Fiaso). Water, electric power, waste recycling, environmental services, public transport are some of the “industrial” sectors of intervention of Confservizi and its members, as well as key “social” sectors like health, culture and public housing.

Confservizi Lazio acts as a legal advisor for its members, promotes bills of law that regard public services at a regional level, co-ordinates initiatives addressed to different local authorities, co-operates on numerous projects of political, social and economic interest with the most important associations of local authorities, the trade unions, the industrial entrepreneurs’ organizations, and the chambers of commerce.

Confservizi Lazio supports its members at an institutional, technical, scientific, professional and training-led level, holds workshops and meetings, and leads a complex program of field studies and research. Furthermore, Confservizi Lazio takes part to and promotes numerous valorisation and requalification projects for workers and managers from associated organizations.

As an employers’ union, Conservizi Lazio guides the VARCO project since it holds that fighting against discrimination and lack of opportunities of whole layers of its members’ workforce makes sense not only in the view of social justice but also in the logic of an efficient work market.

Confservizi Lazio’s mission is to improve the quality of life of citizens and customers of public services in Rome and Latium. To do so, Conservizi Lazio encourages its members to attain a culture of high quality standards and adopt Charts of Services which clearly state the service providers’ obligations and their customers’ rights. Confservizi Lazio is also an employers’ organization committed to the improvement of working and life conditions for all employees in the local public service sector.

Confservizi Lazio endorses the merger and growth of its companies in order to gain a dimension beneficial to managing industrial public services like the supply of water, electric power or transport to a large urban conglomerate like Rome and its metropolitan hinterland.

UIL di Roma e del Lazio

UIL di Roma e del Lazio is the regional federation for Rome and Latium of trade unions that are members of UIL, one of the three largest workers’ confederations in Italy. The Italian trade union movement is the largest numerically in the European Union, with a total of over 12 million members organised in three union confederations.

In Rome and Latium, UIL is active at a local and regional level in promoting working policies with regard particularly to weak groups in the work market, in co-ordinating programs and policies related to new tools for professional training and lifelong learning in the working place and the work market, in implementing strategies and guidelines on the identification of irregular and illegal work, in representing new (full and part-time) job and contract types introduced through Law 30/2003 (the so-called “Legge Biagi”).

UIL’s numerous goals are:

• drawing up all contract aspects at all levels of working relationships to determine choices consistent to the workers’ needs;
• implementing with the other trade unions solutions to cope with problems affecting the workers in order to create unity in pursuing common claims;
• guarding its associates’ professional, legal, economic, social and moral interests, and protecting the workers’ health;
• improving public and private-sector workers’ culture, education, qualification and professional updating;
• strengthening the workers’ sense of association and togetherness to bring up to date their information of the aspects and problems regarding their jobs;
• working out within the national Union and its sectorial branches a net of discussion and exchange of data on facts and problems related to trade union actions.

IL is strongly committed to the VARCO project since it holds the view that action to promote European growth requires the promotion of social justice and workers’ rights and professional opportunities. Delocalisation, longer working hours and increased job insecurity are more likely to depress the European economy than stimulate it. And without action to promote more and better jobs, adequate social protection, lifelong learning and care for children and the elderly, Europe’s citizens will not support the further liberalisation of European markets, or the promotion of greater political integration. UIL’s regional body for vocational and educational training, ERFAP Lazio, has been involved in recent years in several European projects, such as Equal (with the development partnership Po.Int.- Possible Integration) and Leonardo (with the development partnership V.A.I.- Non formal and Informal Learning Assessment).

San Giuseppe Moscati

The mission of the no-profit Association San Giuseppe Moscati’s regards the setting up and managing of social, educational and health assistance centres for Italian and international students from the various Catholic universities in Rome.

The association takes its inspiration from Giuseppe Moscati, who was canonised by Pope John Paul II on 25th October 1987. As a medical doctor and a university lecturer, he joined science and faith. He loved the poor, and would either cure them for free or help them of his own volition.

On a no-profit basis, the Association San Giuseppe Moscati has put into service a large Centre for Preventative Medicine, dedicated to “John Paul II”, as a prevention and assistance facility, located in the Papal Gregorian University. The Association also carries out numerous activities of counselling and guidance.

The Association holds meetings and workshops in the field of social solidarity as well as training activities in line with the Italian regulations of no-profit social associations.