This is why in Italy work is not just pessimism and clichés (as the unions say)
Facts and data that clash with the current narrative of trade unions about the "rampant precariousness" in work in Italy. Giuliano Cazzola's comment
"A trumpet call is heard on the right": Speaking at the Congress of the Veneto – says Collettiva – the leader of the CGIL, Maurizio Landini, continued to hit the keys that should be touched to initiate the necessary change in the country. Because the material condition of those who need to work to live, amid rampant precariousness and inflation that erodes already meager wages, has never been so difficult in recent decades. We need a turning point – the trade unionist underlined – the one that the CGIL and the other confederal unions have been asking for for some time. “A ringer answers on the left'': We no longer talk about work – relaunched the UIL secretary Pierluigi Bombardieri -, but social tensions are increasing. We are every day among workers and workers who tell us about their difficulties. While working, millions of people do not make ends meet and look resigned to the future. It's time for politics to wake up!''.
When I read certain statements, much more similar to slogans than to completed analyses, I ask myself – as a former trade unionist – what reasons can induce leaders of large organisations, deprived of power and responsibility, to flee from a complex reality and take refuge in prefabricated scenarios in order to justify one's inability to deal with change. How must a union leadership group that was predicting millions of layoffs feel at the end of the unfortunate suspension of layoffs (which turned into a substantial hiring freeze, wiping out a million jobs during the pandemic) when, fortunately, employment started a growth process that hasn't stopped yet? Can we be satisfied with Bombardieri's narratives who denounce the unsustainability of the condition not only of those who don't have a job or have lost it, but also of those who work? Until proven otherwise, it is the trade unionists who negotiate and stipulate the employment contracts and define the inflation adjustment criteria with the counterparties. Then one is surprised when one discovers that workers go on their own to look for a better job – There are one million 660 thousand resignations – writes Collective – which were recorded in the first nine months of 2022: 22% more than the previous year (in 2021 they were 1.36 million). The data is provided by the Ministry of Labour, disclosing the usual quarterly data on mandatory communications. The dicastery also specifies that resignations are currently the second cause of termination of employment relationships, coming after the expiry of fixed-term contracts.
Taking into consideration only the third quarter of 2022, therefore the period from July to September, there were 562,000 resignations, up by 6.6% (equal to over 35,000 voluntary exits). For a correct reading of the data, however, it should be noted that the number indicates the employment relationships terminated due to resignations and not the number of workers involved. However, the number of layoffs is also on the rise, resumed after the lockdown due to the pandemic. In the first nine months of 2022 there were 557 thousand (in the same period of 2021 there were 379 thousand), with a leap forward of 47%. From the difference between the two data – we observe – a reliable estimate of the effects of the blockade could be obtained (less than two hundred thousand suspended layoffs compared to almost one million jobs lost). In the third quarter of 2022 – continues Collettiva – there were 181 thousand, up by 10.6% (equal to 17 thousand departures decided by the employer) compared to the third quarter of 2021.
“The increase in resignations can have very different explanations”, explains the confederal secretary Tania Scacchetti. “On the one hand, it can be positively linked to the desire, after the pandemic, to bet on a more satisfying or more 'agile' workplace. On the other hand, however, especially for those who don't already have another job to move towards, it could be linked to an increase in malaise also due to a lack of involvement and poor professional valorisation on the part of companies”. This prompts the union to investigate. It is strange, however, that we get an inkling of certain processes when we read them in the Istat statistics. A trade union with the credentials in order should see and manage them in advance because they take place every day within the companies and contractual instruments are provided for to be able to face them as protagonists. Of course, in order to meet these workers' needs, it is not enough to privilege national bargaining, as large trade union sectors claim, to the point of making it erga omnes, but it is necessary to make use of decentralized and proximity bargaining, which is also facilitated on a fiscal level.
Pietro Ichino, a few years ago, published an essay entitled “The intelligence of work. When the workers choose the entrepreneur”. And he was "crucified in the mess hall". But pray tell, isn't that what happens today through the surprising and massive phenomenon of voluntary resignations? Perhaps it is not a matter of male and female workers who have noticed, by themselves, that, in this phase, it is the demand that is chasing the offer of work, certainly as regards the quality, but more and more often the quantity of the offer itself. Then there are other data that clash with the current narrative of "rampant precariousness". Also because the leap in quality has concerned permanent hiring, as a condition for companies to find the necessary manpower. Adding up the data on new jobs in the last two years (+ 948 thousand), employment has returned to pre-Covid levels. More must and can be done: but what has been described so far has been accomplished.
According to Istat, there are already conditions for 500,000 more jobs. To get an idea of how a trade union should work, it is useful to read the very recent publication of the Dashboard of work in metalworking by the Fim-Cisl. As Roberto Benaglia writes in the introduction: “We are the union that wants to overcome and detach itself from a pessimistic image of work made up only of clichés. The trade union movement cannot play its representativeness only by narrating sectors in continuous crisis and representing a continuous worsening of the workers' conditions. Never as in recent years have we seen first hand, especially in territories and workplaces, how technologies, the different organization of work, the attention to results, the involvement and participation of workers are causing an important mutation in metalworking , which is worth more and more and must be enforced more and more through bargaining”. Then the leader of the Fim-Cisl continues: "Knowing in depth not only the trends, but above all the direction that work is taking is a priority commitment for the union and the Fim, which makes contractual innovation a strength that has always been practiced with courage and passion''.
The summary of the Dashboard delivers some very indicative interpretations of trends now established in the category:
– despite a slowdown in industrial production, the sector sees an increase in the trade balance and the months of guaranteed production;
– the occupation has suffered the years of the pandemic, war and energy costs, but has not suffered serious losses in comparison with other crises and in the past;
– in metalworking there are rates of precarious or fixed-term work which are much lower than those of the entire economy;
– productivity, historical disease of the Italian economy, has grown by 15 percentage points in a decade;
– a metalworker earns an average of over 40 thousand euros and wages, also thanks to the so-called separate agreements, have increased up to 2021 more than inflation;
– the accident rate has been declining for about ten years, although this improvement has stopped in the recent past, and is lower than in other European countries;
– continuous training involves a growing number of workers, certainly not enough with respect to the acceleration of technological innovation;
– the theme of the shortage of professionalized manpower explodes with respect to the needs of companies;
– gender pay gaps are lower than the broader economy;
– unfortunately the presence of metalworking in the south of the country is weakening.
Commenting on this interesting initiative, Luigi Marelli in Il diario del lavoro wanted to recall what an illustrious trade unionist, Vittorio Foa, of the CGIL, said of the Fim-Cisl: "It is a wonderful minority organization, which strongly aims at the primacy in the category, aware that in order to achieve this objective she is condemned to study”.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/ecco-perche-in-italia-il-lavoro-non-e-solo-pessimismo-e-luoghi-comuni-come-dicono-i-sindacati/ on Sun, 05 Feb 2023 06:46:06 +0000.