The government has given itself a one-month horizon to assess the evolution of the economic and geopolitical situation, and to launch a new anti-price increase shield to protect families and businesses. Always trying to avoid extra debt. Some glimmers to avoid resorting to a deviation come from the performance of GDP, which not only avoided the minus sign in the first quarter but is giving encouraging signals on the trend in the second. Of course, the spaces that would open would be fundamentally already mortgaged: the cut in excise duties on petrol, expiring on July 8, which many ask to extend or strengthen, costs one billion a month; it would take at least two to get to September and avoid bloodletting when leaving for the holidays.
Intervention to protect wages
In all likelihood, however, it will be necessary to replicate some interventions to protect wages, after the bonus of 200 euros (arriving for employees, retirees and unemployed with incomes up to 35 thousand euros, but also earners of citizenship and seasonal income) with paychecks of July. A one-off measure would avoid the “vain chase between prices and wages” evoked by the governor of the Bank of Italy Ignazio Visco. Also because any structural measures could only be discussed in the autumn, with the Budget law.
Table hypothesis at Palazzo Chigi
It is likely that a new confrontation with the social partners will be sought. At the moment there are no appointments on the agenda at Palazzo Chigi, but Prime Minister Draghi would be available to convene a table on wages with the social partners to manage all together, trade unions, businesses and the government, a critical phase for the loss of purchasing power of workers.
The pressing on the minimum wage
The galloping inflation also accentuates the urgency of a reflection on the minimum wage dossier, with increasing pressure to reach an agreement within the legislature. On the minimum wage, the Minister of Labor Andrea Orlando recalled that there is a proposal that envisages how “the overall remuneration contained in the contracts can become the reference minimum wage for all workers in that sector”.