Inps? Social safety nets go to Anpal. The prof. Of the Count
How to reform the labor market and the social safety nets system. An interview by Nunzia Penelope, deputy director of the Diary of work , with Maurizio Del Conte, professor of Labor Law at Bocconi
The freeze on layoffs, even if it is extended further, will sooner or later have to end. And the problem will arise of having an adequate safety net to withstand the impact, a system of social safety nets and active labor policies capable of accompanying both possible dismissals, re-insertions, both new hires and recovery will hopefully bring. We talked about this, and much more, with Maurizio Del Conte, professor of Labor Law at Bocconi.
Del Conte, the social safety nets system of the past no longer works, a reform is being worked on. You say that the first step of this reform should aim to reunify the income support part with that of active policies. For what reason?
The system of social safety nets, as it was thought decades ago, is no longer functional. Once there was the slide towards retirement, crises were also used by companies to make turnover. A questionable system, because in the end it always paid for Pantalone, but which had its own logic. Today this can no longer be done, both because of the costs and because a person has to go through six or seven transitions from one job to another in his life. In order to be efficient, social safety nets must now consider a “salary” for relocation, a remuneration for the commitment that people make for their professional retraining and subsequent repositioning on the labor market. Furthermore, it is essential that people are taken care of quickly: the longer they stay away from the labor market, the more difficult it will be to relocate them. Those who remain abandoned to the subsidy then end up in long-term unemployment and never recover. For this it is essential that social safety nets and active policies are together: keeping income support separate on the one hand, and on the other the network that will have to help people in finding a new job, accompanying them and retraining them professionally, cannot work, it is an incomplete system.
What does putting them together mean in practice?
I know I am in the minority, but I think that the assistance part, that is the social safety nets, should be removed from the INPS and entrusted to Anpal. Today, however, I see that the role of Anpal itself is being reduced. But if you do not have a single subject that provides subsidies and active labor policies, the latter remain just a fig leaf: the useless tinsel of going to the employment center from time to time, going when they call you, which today is too often a purely formal act.
The so-called conditionality has never actually been exercised.
But because it is wrong as an idea at the very root: it is not that I give you first, and then I check if you commit yourself. The opposite must be done: I make a pact with you, and I remunerate you for your commitment. This is how it works in France, in Germany, in Sweden, in all the countries that have invested heavily in active policies. And, from this point of view, Naspi would also need to be changed: the decalage after the fourth month makes no sense, in a system like the one I have described.
For what reason?
The basic concept is wrong: today the decalage is intended as a stimulus for getting busy finding a job and not settling into the subsidy; but if I don't offer any reintegration path together, what's the point? In my opinion, it is more correct to pay the entire allowance until the completion of the course, with the mutual commitment to relocate and train professionally. There is really a lot of work to do to reconstruct active policies: structures, funding, paths, public-private collaboration, and so on.
How do you imagine a public-private collaboration in this sector?
There are already many collaboration experiences that work. The private agencies have as their reference mainly the companies, the employment centers, that is the public side, are more oriented towards the workers: a collaboration between them would allow to make the two worlds meet more easily, with exchanges of information and skills. Furthermore, companies often do not turn to the public because they do not find the answers they need, that is, well-selected candidates: it is a service that the employment centers are not always equipped to perform as it would be necessary. Basically: it is necessary to spread the culture of a professional intermediation that is able to cross job supply and demand in a coherent and ideal way, also solving the misalignment of skills. Today, with the current "informal" systems, there is very often a wrong allocation of people.
Yet private agencies are often portrayed as "human flesh merchants". For what reason?
There is a cultural bias: anyone who interferes in the direct employer-employee relationship is seen as a profiteer. But this happens because what happens in informality is projected onto those subjects who instead perform a professional function. We have been orphans of the numerical call placement, without ever having developed a more modern logic of the labor market, as in other countries where agencies enjoy the trust of users. Furthermore, a professional approach would also favor a, let's say, "moralization" of the labor market itself: phenomena such as illegal hiring and illegal work would tend to be reduced, because professionally intermediated work must necessarily respect the law.
There is also the problem that labor policies are a regional competence: everyone has their own ideas and models, the failed referendum of 2016 also had this goal, that of unifying labor policies. What can be done today?
I think that in the future a strong pact should be achieved with the Regions once and for all: active policies must have a national dimension, then administered at the regional level, but with the same rules throughout the country. The regions must be able to have their say, but then everyone must follow a single and national standard. This is also for another reason, namely that no private individual follows you if you have twenty different rules, one for each different region. And to pay in this case are the weakest regions, in which job services are in greater difficulty.
You rightly speak of the relocation of workers. But recent data says, for example, that an incredibly large portion of citizenship income earners are barely eighth grade, and a barely smaller portion not even that. Apart from the scandal of a G7 country with similar levels of education, it remains to be understood how people who are so culturally fragile can be relocated.
Unfortunately, we have an education system that is firm in Gentile. There is the idea that school should only be culture and that working alongside it would pollute the cultural path of the children. Furthermore: there is no professional guidance here, parents, uncle, family friend, at best a professor do. And in fact we have the highest school dropout rate in Europe, a growing educational poverty, thousands of children with very little chance of ever finding a decent job. Moreover, it is a system that also increases inequalities: those with an educated family will have the necessary support to choose the right school, to complete their studies, those with a culturally disadvantaged family are cut off. A regressive system that rewards the more structured families and leaves the others abandoned to themselves. In other countries, for example in Germany, the relationship between school and work works differently and with excellent results.
But what is the brake that opposes this great reform that appears so necessary and even so simple common sense, but which has been talked about for years without ever realizing it?
It is a little bit the Italian system that hinders it. Unfortunately, when you don't start a virtuous circle, you inevitably end up starting a vicious one. And therefore, on the one hand, there is an objective weakness in public services and in the match between supply and demand; moreover, almost only large companies turn to private agencies, while the small ones, that is the vast majority, end up doing it themselves, and often fish in "gray" work areas, favoring low labor costs over quality. And after all, if you want to pay as little as possible, if you want to compete on a single euro, you do not turn to a professional service. It's all very connected.
There is also the problem of very low wages in our country, so much so that they are almost perfectly superimposed on the figures for subsidies and the poverty line. Could this also depend on the malfunctioning of the labor market, or are the entrepreneurs stingy, or the unions don't know how to do their job, or what, in your opinion?
Wages are low because, at bottom, there is a problem of low productivity and poor quality of work. We are increasingly sliding towards a competition based on labor costs, the result is a wage curve that has been flat in Italy for twenty years. On the other hand, there is also a sort of convenience agreement between companies and unions, social peace is based on low wages. But sooner or later the tensions explode.
In short, in the end everything is held: poorly intermediated work, of low quality, low paid, subsidies, gray areas, wars on the yards, and so on. You say that deep and serious reform could solve many of these problems. Do you think it will be possible to achieve?
I can't tell. But I know that today there are the resources to do it, and there is an absolute need to do it. Therefore, if this is not done, it will be the fault of the decision makers. But missing this train would be unforgivable.
(Extract from an article published in Il diavolo del lavoro, here the full version)
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/inps-gli-ammortizzatori-sociali-vadano-allanpal-parla-il-prof-del-conte/ on Sat, 26 Jun 2021 17:00:43 +0000.