Dear Landini and Bombardieri, here are your 11 mistakes on the minimum wage

5 July 202310 months ago babelfish

Because on the legal minimum wage, Sbarra's Cisl is right while Landini's CGIL and Bombardieri's Uil are wrong. Giuliano Cazzola's analysis

In the work of Cervantes Sancho Panza shared the deeds of Don Quixote, but glimpsed their limits and dangers and warned his Lord in vain.

Pierpaolo Bombardieri has no doubts to follow (if not to anticipate) Maurizio Landini in the most reckless operations in which the leader of the CGIL slips in obedience to the "dark evil" of a depression that leads him to imagine catastrophes where Don Quixote saw enormous giants instead of windmills. Demonstrating excessive zeal in sharing the opposition's proposal on the legal minimum wage, Bombardieri took it out on the CISL, guilty of not sharing the bill developed by the opposition forces (Iv excluded). His presumption of being right is so great that he took the liberty of addressing the CISL with the most serious offense against a confederal trade union: having affairs with the autonomous trade unions. (“The CISL? Dialogues well with the yellow trade unions”). Let's imagine that in his brain (God rest him!) Bombardieri thinks that those who are against the minimum wage are playing into the hands of those spurious organizations, born in the basement, which go around offering companies the so-called pirated dumping contracts; so-called national contracts that apply to a group of companies and which have grown in number in recent years, but concern a limited number of employees, while 97% (some statistics even shoot 99%) of them see a negotiated contract applied by CGIL, CISL and UIL. That to contrast this deplorable phenomenon there is no solution other than getting entangled in the assistance of the law, with the introduction of the smig and in the regulation of representation is an admission of the impotence of the confederal trade unions in solving problems with the classic system of bargaining new and more complicated. Why, in my opinion, is the CISL right while Landini and Bombardieri are wrong?

Beyond the questions of principle, the smig in Italy is a mistake especially for how it is proposed by the oppositions in their pdl. I summarize the reasons – shared by me – contained in a memorandum that Adapt presented in a hearing before the Chamber of Deputies.

1. There is no obligation to introduce a statutory minimum wage.

2. The guarantee of an adequate minimum wage can be achieved – according to the EU Directive – both legally and contractually.

3. The statutory minimum wage is not in itself a guarantee of an adequate minimum wage. In fact, data (2020) show that only in three countries in the European Union is the level of the legal minimum wage adequate according to the criteria commonly used internationally and adopted by the directive with reference to the parameter of 60% of the median gross wage and many Countries are only close to the criterion of 50% of the average gross wage. For most countries, the level of the minimum wage is not adequate according to the benchmarks.

4. The legal minimum wage in Europe tends to be adopted as a subsidiary solution to the contractual option.

5. In Italy the coverage of collective bargaining is very high (99%).

6. The amounts of the minimum gross payables meet the parameters of adequacy, defined at international level and recommended by European directive 2022/2041.

7. The objective of guaranteeing adequate minimum wages can still be well pursued by collective bargaining, without the need for the introduction of a legal minimum wage.

8. The introduction of a legal minimum wage risks weakening the system of representation and undermining the value of industrial relations and the function of the collective agreement which goes beyond the simple function of setting a wage. Moreover, as highlighted by the Directive, "countries characterized by a high coverage of collective bargaining tend to have, compared to other countries, a lower percentage of low-wage workers, higher minimum wages than the median wage, lower wage inequalities and higher wages"

9. The problem of poor work cannot be solved by the introduction of a statutory minimum wage, as it is not linked to low levels of hourly wages. It is necessary to address the real specific causes that determine it, including the number of hours worked.

10. The idea of envisaging the application to all workers of the minimum scales of the CCNL stipulated by the associations representing workers and employers that are comparatively more representative on a national level leads to the need for a legal definition of the concept of "comparatively more representative", which is missing in the bills. This would lead to the regulation of trade union representation with the relative problems and implications.

11. The effectiveness of a statutory or contractual minimum wage depends on its level. It must be high enough to guarantee a decent standard of living, but not too high to exceed the companies' ability to pay.

There are, then, other specific reasons that identify the critical points of the bill. We have said that there is not an easy coexistence between the smig and bargaining, because both tools perform the same function. In fact, in the 21 countries that provide for a legal minimum wage, the national contract (which in Italy is the linchpin of the industrial relations system) is either not present or is in a limited form and is often managed in a dimension subordinate to other levels of bargaining. Then there is a "brute" question of negotiating spaces: if the 9 gross euros that are proposed are equal to 87% of the median salary, there is not much room left for further negotiation. Like the so-called escalator at the time of the great inflation which ended up covering all margins of availability, by virtue of the automatic increase in the amount in relation to increases in the cost of living. On the contrary, even if the variation of the smig is not entrusted to an automatic mechanism as was the contingency allowance, the pdl provides for the monitoring of an ad hoc commission which will periodically evaluate the devaluation of the legal minimum wage compared to the cost of living . Basically, the overall remuneration will have a sort of freight elevator inside that will push the remuneration itself up.

It goes without saying that there will be a significant cost for the business system (which will have to adjust the wage scales of collective agreements to the legal minimum wage by November 2024): the most conservative estimates assume a greater cost of 4-5 billion (the calculations were completed at the beginning of the past legislature when the "fever" of the minimum wage came at the time of the Count 1). And on this point, a budget law fund was set up in the pdl, with surprising and shameless nonchalance, to help companies '''to respect the new wage levels''. A new decisive step towards the nationalization of wages.

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/cari-landini-e-bombardieri-ecco-i-vostri-11-errori-sul-salario-minimo/ on Wed, 05 Jul 2023 11:51:59 +0000.