COMPARTECIPAZIONE. –
I. NATURE
An agricultural contract by which an individual worker performs labor in connection with specified crops in return for a predetermined share of the product. The contract is annual and may concern either a single crop or a group of crops. It may encompass an entire farm in its organic unity, or it may refer—as happens much more frequently—to particular parcels. Usually, the compartecipante receives a plot of land already sown, or planted with productive woody crops, and carries out all the necessary manual operations there through to the harvest, also bearing certain cultivation expenses in proportion to the ratio according to which the product is divided.The contract generally applies to crops requiring a large amount of labor (maize, sugar beet, tobacco, tomato, wheat), or to those which, in addition to quantity, also require a high quality of labor (grapevine, almond tree, etc.).
Compartecipanti are agricultural day laborers themselves, who use this contract to supplement the cash wages they receive for other activities. It frequently happens that the same day laborer is at the same time a compartecipante in several farms, even ones far apart from one another.
This figure of the worker possesses the characteristic features of the day laborer. It should be said, however, that besides day laborers, very many small landowners and tenants, especially in the Mezzogiorno, also appear as compartecipanti when the farm they operate is insufficient to provide for the family’s most basic needs.
II. TYPES OF SHARECROPPERS
Within the infinite range of types and subtypes of sharecroppers, the following fundamental groupings may be identified: a) the partitanti of the Po Valley (especially in the Veneto and Emilia), where the division of the product takes place in proportions fluctuating between 30 and 40%. They almost always contribute to the expenses for artificial fertilizers; b) the sharecroppers of the masserie (farms of considerable size) of southern Italy. Among them are found day laborers and also permanent workers, to whom the fava beans, wheat, and fruit-tree crops are entrusted. The share ranges between one third and one half of the total product; c) the sharecroppers on the extensive lands of the south. Here there is the greatest contractual entanglement. It is no longer day laborers, but small landowners and small tenants (terraticanti), who undertake the work. The arrangements range from fixed shares of the product to proportional shares, low in themselves and extremely low in terms of what they represent in actual produce, given the low productivity and the great uncertainty of the crops.III. ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF SHARECROPPING
The positive aspects of the sharecropping contract may be enumerated as follows:a) it is a typical associative contract; b) it enables the sharecropper to make productive use of the labor potential of his family members, including the younger ones, with a considerable increase in the overall income of the family unit, which is thereby strengthened; c) it trains the agricultural laborer in the running of a small farm (share tenancy, small leaseholding). Its disadvantages, though not exclusive to it, are: d) the low labor income frequently imposed by contractual arrangements currently in force; e) the intensive exploitation of the family labor force.
IV. PROSPECTS FOR IMPROVEMENT
Certainly, the participation contract is also susceptible to innovation with the twofold aim of increasing the compensation to which the worker is entitled and enhancing his human personality.In general, and at the trade-union level, efforts are uniformly directed toward a more advantageous share in the distribution of the products and toward abolishing participation in expenses, or attenuating such participation as far as possible. Now, in this matter it is indispensable to proceed with prudence and with a complete knowledge of the economic possibilities of agricultural enterprises. Excessive demands may render the contract uneconomical, and it may happen—as has already happened—that the entrepreneur prefers to replace it with a straightforward return to purely wage-based forms. This would result in a contractual regression, a halt in the process by which the hired laborer advances toward socially more desirable relationships.
The productivist aspect of the participation contract must never be neglected. Every reform of it must also aim at increasing production, from which alone a real improvement in the living conditions of the participant can be expected. The shares in the distribution should therefore be corrected, but with due consideration, following a careful examination of local circumstances and possibilities. The participant should likewise be assured broad technical assistance (temporary courses for peasants, experimental fields, etc.) and, in the sphere of social assistance, equal access to the forms of social insurance already in force for other categories of workers.
For the other enterprises, v.: AZIENDA; IMPRENDITORE; PARTECIPAZIARISMO.