Italian employees at Aviano Air Base in northern Italy have recently paused from flipping burgers, unloading trucks and restocking shelves to open emails from their bosses asking them to list five important achievements since last week.
The email is a well-known request from President Trump's leading cost cutter Elon Musk, carrying the threat of fire if they fail to respond. However, on this occasion it did not land with US government officials, but rather in Italy, a country where workers' rights are sacred.
The result was the setting for a clash of the world's wealthiest man and the chain that throws his work, and an inexplicable cultural conflict, one of the most protective champions in the world of eternal work, on the other.
“We're here in Italy,” said Roberto del Savio, a union representative and employee. “There are accurate rules and I thank God for that.”
Aviano, an Italian airbase that hosts the wings of the US 31st fighter jet, employs more than 700 Italian civilians.
Approximately 4,000 Italian civilian employees work at a base serving around 15,000 American soldiers in Italy, each turning it into a miniature American town where US military personnel can find American food and other familiar items from their homes.
These jobs are fully united and protected under Italian labour laws, in line with the longstanding Italian labour tradition. But at the same time, employees work for the US government, which pays their salaries.
The email was forwarded by the department head to dozens of Italian civilian employees working at the Army & Air Force Exchange Services at Aviano Base, which provides goods and services to the U.S. Army.
No one was sure if it was a one-off misconception or if Musk was trying to assert his demands on Italian and American workers. Pentagon officials said the emails are intended for US employees, but local employees can also “receive emails.”
The confusion raised the question of whether Musk could export his brand to the country “on labour” according to the first article in the Constitution, or whether his chainsaw would stumble upon the infamous thick bureaucrats in Italy.
“Our things are systems built on democracy, protection and protection provided by contracts that must be respected,” Pierpalo Bombardilli, executive director of the Italian UIL Union, said in a statement.
Bombardili called the email “unacceptable” and the method “abnormal.” The Italian union sought explanations from the Italian government and the US embassy.
For now, it appears that the ground rules must only respond to emails if Italian civilians receive it directly from the US government. Not when they were transferred to them, as happened in the city of Vicenza at Aviano and at least one other base in Italy. However, it remains unclear whether the Pentagon was trying to reach out to Italian workers directly.
Some German employees of the US government in Germany also received Musk's first email and asked him to explain the output of their work, a senior Berlin diplomat said he didn't want to name them while talking about their allies. (Musk's follow-up email appears to have been sent only to American employees in Germany, the diplomat said.
In the meantime, some Italian employees responded to emails, Del Sabio said. “I say I was sliced pizza, the other guy says something else,” he said. “But we were all very confused,” he said. “Italia is not the wild west like the United States.”
Despite recent changes that have sought to make the labour market more flexible, Italian labour law continues to provide a wide range of protection for its employees. Particularly in the public sector, getting a permanent job is often considered a guarantee that it is impossible for life.
While many in Italy value this system as the backbone of the Italian welfare state and its democracy, others point out that it is a strict and inefficient juggernaut that prevents jobs from being created for young people.
The story of a 30-minute work day and a one-day coffee break is like an Italian legend. Some people said that the musk-style slash and burn approach touch doesn't hurt here.
“Italians also need x in masks,” Italian journalist and right-wing commentator Nicola Polo wrote in a blog post, denounced Italy's “useless position.”
The Italians grabbed it in juxtaposition. Tiktok creator Alberico di Pasquale made the video pretending to show Italian employees on a permanent contract in response to Musk's emails. “No. 1: I'm coming to work, No. 2: I In, No. 3: Breakfast,” he said. “No. 4: Tournament with my colleagues check who gets the coffee. No. 5: Get the coffee. Repeat points 4 and 5 for 5 times. No. 6: I pay the bill and the grocery store. No. 7, I take the watch out.”
But some enjoyed the demands from Musk for the union representatives at Aviano's American base and other Italians, but it was serious business.
The fear of spending cuts is spreading overseas in the US, just as Trump questioned the US commitment to NATO and argued that Europe must protect itself.
Amid a 30-day freeze on federal credit cards, the US government also freezes the credit cards that Aviano Italian employees used to purchase equipment for the base last week, and has since started a job freeze, the union said.
Union workers said they didn't know what would come next. But they said they were going to fight.
“Musk can do whatever he wants in the US,” said union representative Emilio Falgunori. “If they're happy with it, certainly,” he added. “I'm not here.”
Jim Tankersley and Jeanna Smialek contributed to the report.
