The Tobacco Manufacturing Factory
Near “Porta Sant’Anna” and the square “Piazzale Verdi” is the industrial complex of the former Tobacco Factory. Today it is an area of industrial archeology, but once it provided jobs to more than 3,000 workers, creating a product, the Tuscan cigar, which is highly appreciated in Italy and abroad. The historical birth of the factory dates back to early nineteenth century. The plant is also known for the protest carried out in 1912 by pieceworkers, who denounced the low quality levels of the raw material used for the production of cigars. Following their grievances, the cigar makers succeeded in asserting their claims, also obtaining for the first time nurseries in their workplace. The manufacturing plant remained active until 2004.
Comics strip 1
In order to explain Article 4 of the Constitution Pertini goes to the former Tobacco Manufacturing Factory.
Pertini: "Here we are. The factory before us once housed the Tobacco Manufacture".
Francesco: "Mr. President, what does "manufacture" mean?"
Pertini: "Here the famous Tuscan cigars and cigarettes were made; and so the right to work was guaranteed to many people!"
Comics strip 2
Marco: "But Mr. President, Article 4 of the Constitution is about the right to work, that's why you took us here!!"
Francesco: "Mr. President, my grandfather and my grandmother once told me that they worked in this place, too and that, thanks to the money they earned, they could buy the house where they live today".
Comics strip 3:
Pertini: "Well done, pupils!!! You understood why we came to visit this place. Once many inhabitants of Lucca worked in the Tobacco Factory, especially women".
Art.4 Cost.
The Republic recognises the right of all citizens to work and promotes those conditions which render this right effective. Every citizen has the duty, according to personal potential and individual choice, to perform an activity or a function that contributes to the material or spiritual progress of society.