Although the OECD continues to repeat that the way to push the recovery is to reduce the tax-contributory wedge, and the premier himself, Mario Draghi, has expressly excluded tax increases (including on businesses and labor), a slice of the government majority, M5S-Pd-Leu, with the side of the CGIL, has returned to invoke the minimum wage, to increase wages, together with the law on representation, in order to fight against contractual dumping. And this while reform of shock absorbers and active and training policies, absolute urgencies of the moment, are still in the “draft” phase (postponed to October in the budget law and in comparison with the regions).
Tridico: with 9 euros per hour you increase for 4 million workers
A little surprisingly, the delicate and divisive theme of the minimum wage was also proposed by the president of INPS, Pasquale Tridico , which, in recent days, has shown that with a (legal) threshold of 9 euros gross per hour, four million workers would have wage increases. The threshold of 9 euros gross per hour is the same as the proposal of the former Minister of Labor, Nunzia Catalfo, discussed for months a couple of years ago, then remained on stand-by, due to disputes within the then majority (in particular with the League) and the fall of the Conte executive.
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The cost node
The point, which emerged strongly even then, is that 9 euros gross per hour for all workers, according to the technical analyzes carried out, would have led to an increase in the average cost of labor of no less than 20%, the Labor consultants had emphasized. in a specific study of June 2019. And also Istat and Inapp, in parliamentary hearings on the Catalfo bill, had highlighted significant increases in costs, direct and indirect, for companies in the event of any introduction of the measure. On the basis of all these investigations, under the threshold of 9 euros gross per hour, three million private workers were indicated to which workers in the domestic sector (864 thousand) and a part of the agricultural sector (350 thousand) were added; in short, more or less, the four million cited by the INPS president, who receive an hourly wage of less than 9 euros.
In the national collective bargaining agreement broader guarantees and protections for workers
Also in 2019, as you will remember, M5S and Pd were talking about the minimum wage, but with distant positions on the two real nodes of the question: the 9 euros (or the legal amount that we want to fix) are only remuneration, or what do they also include? And, secondly, what role should the CCNL have to play? The same two knots, which remained unsolved at the time, would arise again today, also considering how, in Italy, the perimeter of the guarantees and protections offered to the worker by national collective agreements is much more extensive than the mere minimum remuneration.