Machines at the service of people

On 22 October, President Sergio Mattarella handed the Stelle al Merito del Lavoro for 2026 to workers at the Quirinale in Rome. The ceremony gave him a platform to set out his view on technology and labour. He said that creativity, ingenuity and an organisation that respects human values are inalienable features of work, which he described as an expression of freedom. He recalled that workers' organisations fought for these principles over past centuries. Mattarella said he wants machines to bring more efficiency and precision, to raise workplace safety and to reduce fatigue and need. He warned against new and insidious forms of subjugation that could develop through a perverse use of logarithms.

“We want machines to bring more efficiency and precision.”

Work as a vehicle of democracy

Mattarella argued that work must not be treated as a cost to squeeze in the name of competitiveness. He criticised a society split between a few privileged people and many excluded, and he tied work directly to democracy. Power, he said, is organised through shared and democratic institutions to secure the welfare of the whole society. He added that work, with its culture and ethics, produces ideas, plurality and wellbeing, and builds communities. He called on Europe to defend the values of its civilisation and the social model they produce, and urged that social dialogue not be underestimated even as technological change accelerates.

“That is why work is a vehicle of democracy, and it contributes to the quality of cohesion in a civil society.”

Humanoid robots and the future of the ceremony

Mattarella said artificial intelligence is playing a predominant part in working life, changing the structure of society and the time and space of each person's day. He pointed to the introduction of humanoid robots, in the order of tens of thousands in the coming years, as a question for the relationship between people and work. He said the answer depends on humanity itself, and that issues once considered futuristic are now reality. He called for a mature reflection that keeps the person at the centre. Speaking of the years ahead, he set out the prospect he wants to avoid.

“We would like to avoid that, a few decades from now, this ceremony could be replaced by a contest for the most diligent humanoid.”

Remembering the Arsia mine victims

Mattarella also remembered the workers who died in the Arsia mine in 1940, which he described as a dramatic mining catastrophe. He said he had accepted requests from the Federazione Maestri del Lavoro and the Ministero del Lavoro to honour those workers with a recognition, albeit one of memory. The articles do not give a death toll or the number of workers who were killed. The homage was part of the same ceremony in which the 2026 Stelle al Merito del Lavoro were presented.