Labour and Ecology in the Venice Lagoon: The struggles against noxiousness of Porto Marghera’s workers

Porto Marghera is the industrial area on the Venice Lagoon. Authorised in 1917, its creation began in 1918-19. Throughout its history, Porto Marghera hosted a wide variety of plants, from a major shipyard (owned today by Fincantieri), to metal manufacturing and food processing industries. For the best part of its existence, nonetheless, Porto Marghera’s landscape was dominated by the chemical industry. Large fertiliser plants began operating in the 1920s, while the petrochemical complex known as Petrolchimico was established in 1951 and subsequently expanded. Especially in its early decades, production in Porto Marghera was marked by extreme levels of ‘noxiousness’, a term used by the Italian labour movement that can be defined as production-induced harm to both human and non-human life. This, combined with the very sensitive location of the industrial area – sandwiched between the working-class neighbourhood of Marghera and the Venice Lagoon – turned Porto Marghera in a key arena within Italy’s struggles around work and ecology.