In 2019 we founded Redacta – the editorial workers’ section of Acta, the Italian freelancers union – to turn the tables in Italy’s 3.5 billion book publishing industry, which for at least forty years had been a testing ground for the most extreme forms of outsourcing and precarization. We – proofreader, illustrators, translators, typesetters, ghostwriters and so on – were required to hold high qualifications and experience, yet paid very low fees. This is a situation familiar to many other cultural and creative industries worldwide, in fact we were dealing with the same “triangle of weakness”:
- widespread individual bargaining with no clear path to collective bargaining;
- insufficient enforcement of the few existing labour (and copyright) law protections;
- increasing concentration of firms.
We started from the first side of the triangle. Through surveys and the direct involvement of workers, we created a mutualistic space for sharing information about the market and the profession: suggested rates, contracts terms and labour rights. In a sector in which everyone kept their problems locked in their own little room, it is now possible to achieve what we call “mass individual bargaining”: the possibility of negotiating with companies while backed by a supportive network and a shared wealth of knowledge.
More and more people joined our efforts, and greater awareness spread among workers in the Italian publishing industry, especially the younger generation, whom we often reach by delivering lectures at universities. We’ve also seen some companies change their worse practices. Not bad for a union of volunteers.
However, the other two sides of the triangle remained intact, and undermined most of our efforts. In short, we were dealing with monopsony power without the means – effective labour protections and collective bargaining – to fight back. Then, we saw an opportunity.
A paradigm shift
In September 2024, AGCM, the Italian Antitrust Authority, started an investigation into the textbook segment of the publishing industry, where four large groups control 80% of the market. The investigation began in a “traditional” way, focusing on the impact of concentration on consumers. Our opportunity to widen its scope – to stress the negative effect of the concentration on workers – was a month-long “Call for input”.
We swiftly asked our members to send us the contracts they had signed with the largest publishing groups and found a slew of abusive clauses, including unpaid non-compete obligations, indiscriminate transfers of copyright, and derisory – or non-existent – royalties. For example, we found several 20-year unpaid non-compete for authors. These were professionals highly specialized not only in their subject matter but also in pedagogy, yet they were signing contracts that drastically reduced their ability to earn a living from their expertise. Within a few weeks, we had prepared a report for the Authority, arguing that the pervasive use of these clauses across every major publishing group was itself an antitrust issue.
In February we had a formal hearing with AGCM and, after a round of observations, we waited for the end of the investigation, crossing our fingers.
Et voilà: in its final report, published at the end of 2025, the Authority highlighted the problems stemming from the industry’s extensive outsourcing model – low fees, pervasive abusive clauses and, more generally, a “strong bargaining imbalance” between workers and publishers. It also noted the lack of enforcement of the fair compensation provision for authors, despite Italy’s ostensibly robust implementation of the EU 2019 Copyright Directive. According to the European Writers Council, this enforcement gap is common across Europe.
Crucially, the Authority also adopted one of our proposals, introducing a new mechanism to enforce Italian labour law for freelancers.
Since 2017, Italian freelancers have formally enjoyed legal protections against late payments and, most relevant here, a provision nullifying abusive clauses. Because Acta fought hard for this law (the Statute of Self-Employment), it has always been dispiriting to see how toothless it proved in the markets where the imbalance of bargaining power between workers and firms is starkest – precisely where these protections are most needed.
Against this backdrop we rejoiced to read paragraph 480 of the AGCM report’s Conclusions:
“The Authority reserves the right to verify […] the legitimacy of contractual conditions unilaterally imposed in commercial relationships with […] individual self-employed workers active in the supply of authorial–editorial services.”
Until then, to void abusive clauses freelancers had to obtain a civil court ruling, now – admittedly, only for those working in the textbook industry – it is possible to void the clauses with a simpler, more straightforward channel.
It was a lot of work, but we managed to secure a new mechanism of protection through an antitrust investigation. A paradigm shift. For once, we allowed ourselves the audacity to declare victory.
Deterrence in action
Six months after the fact, we are already seeing the deterrence in action. Since January our members have been contacting us to ask for help in negotiations. One typical question has been: “Should we involve AGCM to have this clause declared void?” Before the report, freelancers often accepted abusive clauses as inevitable. Publishers, too, seem aware of the sword of Damocles of antitrust intervention: new “fair negotiations” clauses are appearing in contracts, stating that the agreement was freely and fairly negotiated. The irony, of course, is that these declarations appear in contracts that still contain the very abusive clauses they are meant to shield.
Jokes aside, AGCM has yet to intervene directly: it’s still risky for individual practitioners to call out a monopsonist. Since abusive clauses are a systemic feature of the market – rather than merely a problem of individual contracts – the right to request the intervention of the Antitrust Authority should extend to trade unions and associations of workers, rather than being left to individual workers alone.
We still have a lot of work to do to build on our victory, but it is encouraging to see the new paradigm already finding application in another sector: recently AGCM started its first investigation into a restrictive agreement in the labour market.
One triangle after another.
About the Author:
Mattia Cavani trained as a political scientist at the University of Bologna and the University of Pavia. Since 2015, he has worked as a freelance non-fiction editor and ghostwriter for leading Italian publishing houses. In 2019, he co-founded Redacta, the editorial workers’ section of Acta, the Italian freelancers’ union. He has served as President of Acta since 2025. Alongside his voluntary union work, he lectures at universities and contributes to publications on labour issues. His research has focused on freelance work in the book and audiovisual publishing industries, particularly in relation to monopsony, collective bargaining, and fair compensation. Since 2020, he has been a member of the editorial team of Officina Primo Maggio. When time permits, he translates articles on collective action by independent workers into English for his blog, A Supposedly Lone Thing.