“Even the bosses of Porta Nuova against citizenship income: ‘No more picciuttieddi'”. He headlined the Palermo Today newspaper a few days ago, explaining that the mafia leaders of Porta Nuova, in Palermo, are opposed to the subsidy to the poorest because, since it was introduced, they can no longer find low labor to be allocated to the shop. The news added a new reason for alarm in the summer campaign against citizenship income, which for weeks has presented Italy as a country resting on welfare in which the possibility of accessing forms of income support has put entire production sectors in crisis. . In this context, the INPS annual report presented to the chamber on 11 July disproved many clichés and returned the portrait of a country in which the most urgent problem to be solved is not citizenship income, but poor work.
Let’s take catering: while the media tell us every day that there are no workers in catering due to citizenship income, the INPS report tells us that in these sectors 64.5 percent of employees in hotels and restaurants are “Working poor”, compared to less than 5 per cent in the financial sector. Wages are too low, in short, to attract workers. In fact, poor work is more widespread in Italy than in the rest of Europe: in Italy in 2019 11.8 percent of workers were poor, against a European average of 9.2 percent. Furthermore, 23 per cent of workers earn less than 780 euros per month: an income from work below the threshold for using citizenship income. The report also says that the work is paid so little that a large proportion of the working poor can survive only by resorting to assistance to supplement too low wages. If it is true, in fact, that two thirds of citizens’ income earners are minors, the elderly and disabled people, 20 percent have continued to work in these three years, using the subsidy to supplement a low income.
In short, it is clear that poor work is the cause of most of Italy’s ills. It increases inequalities in terms of gender, territory and between Italians and immigrants, and generates pension poverty, because those who work poorly will have a poor pension. It is surprising that it is up to INPS to offer a comprehensive analysis of the causes of inequality and propose solutions. Let us at least hope that politics will listen.