Schlein and Conte at the CGIL demonstration
Schlein: “United on the minimum wage. Migrants? Italy isolated in the EU”
The battle over the minimum wage “I consider important, as well as left-wing, because the country is marked by enormous pockets of poor, underpaid, unacknowledged, mortified work. PWe are talking about three million poor Italians although, on paper, they have a job. It’s those workers that the Meloni government chooses not to see, it persists in canceling. The Labor decree, passed on May 1st, extends fixed-term contracts and vouchers, but archives the citizen’s income which had proved to be a fundamental tool in recent years for tackling progressive impoverishment. 20 percent of those who take it are poor even if they work. Thanks to Giorgia Meloni they will lose this support”. The secretary of the Pd Elly Schlein explains it in an interview with La Repubblica, in the aftermath of the unitary proposal of the minority forces (except Italia viva) on the minimum wage.
“Ours is a strong response from the opposition, which in the meantime asserts the principle whereby below a certain threshold it is no longer work but it is exploitation, it is poverty, in fact. It’s not just a minimum wage proposal, because it strengthens collective bargaining and extends the remuneration of the most representative contract to all workers in the sector. Set a minimum threshold of nine euros per hour below which you cannot go. For us, work and the poor must no longer be in the same sentence”. For the dem leader “it is important” that the government takes the proposal into account, “in the first place because it is not a wishful thinking or instrumental proposal but a project put forward by all the political forces that represent the other half of Italians, the one that did not vote for the centre-right But above all, for the objective that it sets itself: to cope with the weight of inflation that weighs on many families, eroding their purchasing power and creating enormous pockets of new poverty.Meloni and his government cannot turn away “. As for the postponement of the vote on the ratification of the Mes, Schlein observes: “This is the government of postponements and passing the buck”.
And on the issue of migrants and the veto of Poland and Hungary: “Unfortunately we are isolated and we will always be isolated, if Giorgia Meloni continues to choose the wrong friends”, underlines the secretary of the Democratic Party. Finally, the Pnrr: “I am worried. The hesitations of the government risk making Italy lose an historic opportunity”, “I believe they are wasting time because they do not share the aims of this plan and it would be a very serious fact if we failed to achieve the objectives”. Worried about the electoral results of the Pd: “No. When we arrived, the Democratic Party was stuck at 15 percent. In two months we brought it back above 20. I don’t do politics and I don’t make choices by looking at the polls every day”.
Conte: “The agreement reached says that the convergence between political forces is being tested on concrete issues and proposals”
Giuseppe Conte instead says in an interview with La Stampa: “Let’s hope common sense prevails and they don’t continue to pick on the most fragile, as it was with the basic income. This law can be a decisive step forward for many workers crushed by precariousness and exploitation. I am proud that there is my name as the first signing of the proposal, not for me, but for the M5s, which was the first to fight this historic battle”.
Conte underlines that “the agreement reached says that the convergence between political forces is experimented on concrete issues and proposals. Political paths must be built on the needs of citizens and cannot be entrusted to photo opportunities or rallies in tandem”. Renzi, however, slipped away. “The unitary proposal represents the convergence of political forces that form a genuine opposition. I am not surprised that there is no signing by Italia Viva, which finds itself voting in Parliament more often with the government forces”.
Subscribe to the newsletter