MILANO – A day of hearings on the Draghi government’s document on economics and finance and – both from industry and the trade union – the executive receives a constant request: to do more.
Bonomi: “Germany allocates 100 billion, we 5”
“We need a more robust, systematic and above all lasting response”, warns Confindustria, in a hearing on the Def with President Carlo Bonomi, in a passage in which he focuses in particular on the impact of the sanzoni for the conflict in Ukraine and the measures of business support. And the leader of the industrialists underlines: “A possible close solution to the conflict would have the effect of attenuating the impacts but not of eliminating them. And this is why we continue to consider the very short-term approach followed by the Government to be insufficient”.
Draghi wants a wages pact. The CGIL is a patrimonial one
by Valentina Conte
Bonomi claims that companies are in fact side by side with European governments when they adhere to sanctions, “but we need to prepare the right tools to ensure that our productive fabric is not destroyed in whole or in part”. “On the other hand, if Europe proves to be cohesive only on sanctions, it will be necessary to act at the national level. And it will be necessary to do it promptly and with extraordinary interventions, adapted to this new emergency. Germany is allocating 100 billion euros to support the companies through emergency lines of credit, equity interventions and grants to offset the cost increases. With the Def we allocate 5 billion “.
Recognizing that “thinking about making another budget shift” or a new deficit that would increase the public debt “in a situation of rising rates could be a problem”, Bonomi throws the ball on the minefield of rising inflation and the trade union request to adjust wages. “The danger of further fueling the inflation spiral with an incorrect income policy must be avoided”, says the leader of Confindustria, and warns: “It is not possible to ask companies, which are already stopping due to the increases in input costs, also an increase in the cost of labor “, which on the contrary should be cut. On the front of the increase in prices, “a systemic response, a three-way pact with the government and trade unions” would be needed, but “if we try to discuss incomes without asking ourselves how to generate the resources to pay them, it will be a waste of time”.
The criticisms of the trade unions
“The first thing we intend to convey to Parliament is our great concern for what is happening and above all for the picture of uncertainty and progressive worsening that is looming for our country, and beyond”, he inaugurated the adoptions from the trade union front. the deputy secretary general of the CGIL, Gianna Fracassi. According to CGIL, “a double impact” due to the tail of the pandemic and the ongoing war “risks having a heavy impact on workers, pensioners and in general on the weakest sections of the population”. For this reason, according to Fracassi, the picture that the document on economics and finance “draws a picture that, on the one hand, is very optimistic with respect to the prospects”, moreover, “the measures mentioned in the Def do not seem consistent with the situation that our country is facing “. In the menu, the CGIL asks not only for a budget shift and therefore new deficit interventions, but also “an expansion of the taxation on extra profitswhich we believe are very relevant, especially on some fronts “. And another front” is that of a contribution of solidarity for great wealth, large assets of at least over one million euros. I believe that from this point of view it would be a signal, among other things already partly evoked in December by the Prime Minister himself “.
On growth, in the Def “the forecast is in our opinion very fragile, because the second quarter of the year also promises to be negative”, warns the Cisl. Among the various passages of a broad analysis, point by point, the CISL underlines: “The trend scenario of the Def, assumes a substantial renunciation of workers to recover inflation which obviously cannot agree. If the Government itself estimates that the rise in prices is the result of speculation that, for a few companies, would produce at least 40 billion euros in extraordinary profits, it cannot be peacefully accepted that the price of this speculation is borne by the workers, nor can it be taken for granted that over time, market trends will redeem the economic effects of behaviors that have little to do with the market and which, rather, seem to be the result of a sort of oligopolistic cartel among energy product distributors “. “Our request – continues the CISL – is therefore to convene a technical table between the Government and the social partners as soon as possible to verify the actual trend of import energy prices and sterilize the deduction applied to the IPCA in determining the indicators for contractual increases the part of inflation not attributable to them “.
Criticisms also from the Uil: “The Def has not fully grasped all the news that there are at this moment in which the pandemic that is not yet over, indeed has very heavy effects, has been added to the dramatic story of the war in Ukraine”, said the secretary confederal Domenico Proietti. In the Def there is a “partial vision”, warns the Uil, while there is “the need to frame it in an overall vision”, and which is also linked to the PNRR. The proposed intervention is common to the other acronyms: among the various points underlined, the Uil also asks for a “new budget gap”. And to “increase the taxation on extra-profits”, in the energy sector, bringing it from 10 to 30% but also extending it “to all other activities that even during the pandemic have made incredible profits”. Then we need “an epochal turning point in the fight against tax evasion in order not to perpetrate a profound injustice”.