There is an Italy split in two also for the quality of the work. As is duly recorded by research institute surveys, when it comes to quality of life and services, there is a country with European-level standards in Northern Italy and a decidedly more backward one in the South where it is often young people and women who pay the highest price of the accumulated delays. Even the quality of work is no exception to this dichotomy by now consolidated in Italian society and economy. This is demonstrated by the Fifth Survey on the “Quality of work” conducted by INAPP (National Institute for the Analysis of Public Policies) which involved over 15,000 employees (over 17 years old) and 5,000 businesses throughout the country.
The survey places Italy in a sort of ‘middle ground’ between those where the quality of work is higher, such as the Scandinavian countries but also Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Eastern European countries which are at the bottom of the ranking above all due to poor protection in the labor market and working environment (OECD data). Many of the dimensions that have been examined have wider negative connotations in the South than in other areas of Italy. This is the case, for example, for the perceived risk to one’s health in the workplace. Compared to an average of 24% in Italy, this perception is more sensitive in the South (28%) and among civil servants (30%). The same also happens when the quality of work is declined on the dimension of the methods of carrying out the tasks: the growing routinization of work activities is a very widespread perception among workers in the South, where 71% of employed people declare that they carry out mainly repetitive activities.
If the gaze widens beyond the territorial dimension, wider splits emerge that segment the world of work according to gender and age guidelines. Thus, while the quality of work appears to be on average better for men with medium-high levels of education and older age, young people and women usually experience less favorable working conditions. According to the survey, in fact, compared to 37% of workers who declare they have no flexibility with respect to working hours, the share of women who complain about this difficulty rises to 42% and is projected to 50% when it comes to civil servants. A further critical element concerns stagnation in professional careers, which involves 69% of employed people and has even higher values among civil servants and young people aged 18-34 (73%).
Going deeper into the gender dichotomy, it emerges that women (who represent 42% of employed people over 17 years of age) have lower levels of quality of work in the economic dimension, autonomy and control and this can be partly explained by that part of gender segregation which limits access to certain occupations and sectors, but also by the choices, in some cases forced, that the latter make in terms of investment in paid work and care work. In Italy the commitment required by the reconciliation between professional and private life is an almost exclusively female prerogative. It is the female component that frequently gives up demanding career paths that require a significant investment, especially in terms of working hours. An evident symptom of this mechanism is the high share of part-time work involving female employees, not only in its involuntary component.
This also leads to a negative influence on other dimensions, primarily the economic one, but also that of control, as well as allowing for an advantage in the ergonomic one. Instead, following the dichotomy by age, young people suffer from a lower quality of work in economic terms , ergonomic and control. In detail, the youth component of employment (which represents approximately 21.3% of employed Italians over 17 years old), in addition to having difficulty entering the labor market, often follows jobs characterized by low wages, non-standard contracts (temporary and part time) and often inconsistent with the qualification held. The last important distinction is that which concerns employees in the public and private sector. The latter, according to the survey, present the worst levels of quality of work in the ergonomic dimension and autonomy while they are better positioned in the economic dimension and complexity, thus returning a demanding image of the sector (in terms of working hours work, stress, physical effort, etc.), other-directed and routine, but also profitable, which somehow returns advantages in economic, development and career terms. In the opposite position are, of course, public sector employees.