The proposal was launched by the president of Ancc-Coop, the National Association of Consumer Cooperatives, Ernesto Dalle Rive: after 15 years of liberalization, we are returning to closing supermarkets on Sundays. For two economic reasons: the first is that consumption stagnates not because there is a shortage of purchasing opportunities, but because people have little money to spend. The second is that it is increasingly difficult to find people, especially young people, willing to work seven-day-a-week shifts, including Sundays. The debate among entrepreneurs is open. We have heard about it Giorgio SantambrogioCEO of the VéGé Group, an association with over 3,600 points of sale, which includes brands such as Bennet, Decó, IperTosano and Migross, as well as deputy vice-president of Federdistribuzione. «The way forward, at the moment, is to commit ourselves to closing everyone on the occasion of secular and religious holidays. Did I forget about the béchamel for the gastronomic Christmas panettone? Patience, it’s more important that the cashier at the supermarket where I would like to go to buy it can also make the family Christmas lunch.”
Can’t we do more? In Germany, for example, Sunday is sacred. Couldn’t we go back to the situation before the liberalizations of 2011?
«No, at the moment it is not feasible. In many shopping centres, for example, many other shops gravitate around the actual supermarket which would suffer too much in the event of a Sunday closure. And then we must take into account that the majority of Italians find it very convenient to be able to go shopping outside of weekly working hours.”
Is a national law necessary to encourage closures, perhaps providing for regional differences or in tourist areas?
«No, it would be too complicated and would risk penalizing some operators to the detriment of others. The transition, if there must be, must be gradual and I hope that it will be achieved not through a law, but thanks to the free initiative of entrepreneurs.”
But is it true that it is increasingly difficult to find young people willing to work in your sector?
«The problem is not just on Sundays. We struggle to find candidates available to work for example in fish, gastronomy, fruit and vegetables because the pace is sometimes exasperated and the shifts are heavy. From this point of view, I hope that technology can increasingly intervene to reduce the repetitiveness of jobs and leave more time for staff to talk to customers. All research says that customers really appreciate it when they have someone in front of them who can explain the cut of a beef, the maturation of a cheese, the difference between one farmed salmon and another or the availability of a gluten-free product. Certainly being a personal shopper, as they say today, is much more satisfying than arranging goods on the shelves.”
Certain. However, even the best personal shopper, if she works on Sunday while her husband and son stay at home and she never sees them and what’s more she is also paid little, has little motivation to explain to a customer the difference in maturation between two cheeses…
«It’s like this, and this is why I think it’s right to give more value to Sunday work, with better shifts and economic incentives. The general trend in work dynamics, in all sectors, is that of a reduction in working hours and days. Here too there has been a strong emphasis on the one hand on shops open 24 hours a day, and on the other on very large generalist hypermarkets. Now we can say that both these models did not work. The customer prefers medium-sized stores, but wants to be free to go shopping even on Sundays.”
