Dear Secretary,
as a simple member of the Democratic Party, I take the liberty of submitting to you some of my reflections in support of the difficult work you are already doing to revive and, in many ways, reinvent the Party’s identity. Perhaps some ideas can come out of my life experience, which unfolds over the course of 22 years (1962-1984) as a union leader of the UILM, the FLM (United Metalworkers’ Federation) and the UIL Confederation. Subsequently, from 1984 to 1994, the electors of the southern peninsular constituency sent me to Brussels/Strasbourg as a European deputy under the banner of the PSI. In 1994 I ran for the Chamber in the list of Progressives representing Socialist Rebirth.
In the 1996 elections I am not re-elected.
In the last months of 1997 I dedicated myself to consultancy activities for the creation and start-up of one of the first seven temporary work supply companies registered in the national register set up at the Ministry of Labour, after the approval of the Treu package, of which to the law 196/97.
After completing the assignment, I was contacted by various newly established companies in the sector to assume the role of CEO; I choose Antex SpA based in Milan. Subsequently, after a few months, with the change of the shareholder structure and the adoption of the company name Quanta SpA, I was appointed Executive Deputy Chairman, a position I held from 1998 to 2018.
In these twenty years I have also held management positions in the Associations representing the Agencies first in CONFINTERIM and subsequently in ASSOLAVORO, mainly dealing with trade union relations.
I assume I have some qualifications to intervene in the debate, which is anything but reasoned, which occupies a large part of the national media, whether traditional or digital, on a daily basis.
In the meantime, it would be desirable for the PD to open up a cognitive and proactive study of labor issues, clarifying once and for all that in the history of the Italian and European left they represent the key to its raison d’etre. It follows that a serious left can do anything except assume welfarism as its strategic objective; which means that everything can be done except supporting solutions, such as the citizen’s income, which, due to its structure, spends public resources in support of those who, while being able to do so, don’t worry about working or learning and, if anything, use undeclared work to supplement the subsidy, thereby subtracting millions of Euros dutifully allocatable in favor of those who are physically or mentally prevented from working.
The other singular proposal of the minimum wage by law does not seem reliable to me, a case already tested with vouchers in Italy and with minijobs in Germany, which would inevitably be competitive with the wage scales negotiated and, therefore, would result in a lowering of the national wage bill, with negative effects on the general living conditions of medium and low income earners and on INPS and INAIL income with the related repercussions on the pension system and on support for the many victims of accidents at work.
Lastly, one hears and reads more and more frequently that permanent employment should be totally tax-free (a very different solution from the reduction of the tax wedge for the benefit of employees), and great admiration is expressed towards the reform of the socialist Sanchez in Spain; it is a pity that in the country where fixed-term contracts would have been abolished – an assumption that is not true – rather broad-handed dismissal criteria remain, in exchange for very little generous compensations, while, as for illegal work, it is treated like dust under the carpets.
I believe, dear Secretary, that on your part there is full awareness that the chambers of power have distorted the project developed at the Lingotto in 2007, that one should not attribute salvific value to the daily question and answer of the controversies with those who today have the responsibility of the government of the country, to concentrate every material and immaterial resource on the construction of a wide-ranging project that updates the values of the left, which retain their non-negotiability as never before, but must be declined in the relationship with the technological, organizational and economic changes that dominate us and with the challenges that the nascent new world political order imposes on us.
The central problem to be addressed is that of the relationship between people and work, especially dependent work.
Like it or not, it no longer exists, admitted and not granted that it ever existed, at least in dependent work, the approval with lifelong work, with the exception of the priesthood and, not for long, for public jobs. Consequently, we must learn to build a new paradigm, which is based on a real job registry, like the old lever, which follows people from the time they enter school, passing through all its levels: lower, high school, university or professional qualification, up to the first job placement, including apprenticeship by this. Ultimately, the employment relationship must become part of a whole, which can develop in different ways and places, for a long or short time, always and in any case interspersed with phases of qualification and requalification, obviously supported by a new welfare model ; in summary, we could say that the objectives to be pursued are: to give job stability, employment flexibility, continuity of training.
The political-cultural inspiration of the German Mitbestimmung must be taken into account and studied
There are good practices along this line in our country and we find them, albeit with their limits, in the construction fund and even in the system for regulating/protecting seasonal work, such as the agricultural one, even if there is no we will never tire of denouncing and prosecuting abuses, as the story of the deputy in boots demonstrates, as sinister as anyone else, who claimed to defend migrants, but above all looked after the interests of the family. Singular is also the fact that neither he nor the Minister from Varese elected senator in 2019 in Calabria (the first vigorous defender, the other persecutor of migrants) have never said a word to demand the application of the Martina law n. 199 of 29/X/2016, which provides for heavy fines for exploiters of the workforce (the corporals, the false cooperatives of the Centre-North, but also and above all the owners of the land) up to the confiscation of the assets.
The most consolidated and certifiable good practice is found in much more evolved forms in the system of work administered through agencies, in which, without costing the public budget, it has been possible to create a new welfare model of a negotiated mutualistic type, which includes small loans without collateral, supplementary health protection, book purchases, travel expenses, etc., combined with a constant training strategy and the systemic growth of permanent hiring by the Agencies themselves.
It should be added that the trade union agreement between Assolavoro and Nidil/Cgil-Felsa/Cisl-Uiltemp-Uil has given rise to the only experiences of active reception of political asylum seekers, which have allowed a few hundred people to acquire a good level of training and to be employed in shipbuilding, passing over the course of a few years and without interruption from temporary employment to permanent employment. For these experiences, some APL (Employment Agencies) have been recognized by the UNHCR.
The synergy between selection, entry into the work circuit, assisted interruption and dedicated to qualification/requalification is achieved with the comparison between the subjects who own it, employers and workers, requires a recurring negotiating commitment, in the awareness that the relationship between both can only be transparent and, in some passages, even conflictual.
The practice of this line, referring to our times, in which an algorithm can influence radical organizational changes, the living conditions of workers of all levels, relations with related companies, the establishment of new holdingon the location of corporate offices in tax havens, requires the construction of a system of presence of the work force/mind in the decision-making processes, which goes beyond the information rights, conquered in the CCNL renewed in the early 70s of the last century, to give life to a real co-management system.
The political-cultural inspiration of the codetermination Germany must be taken into account and studied, on the one hand, in order to do justice to the ostracism suffered in Italy, as an expression of socialist reformism, on the other, to overcome the limits manifested in practice and deal with the need not to allow entrepreneurial anarchy in management and organization.
In this process of revitalizing the values of work, it is necessary to combine the parameter of GDP (Gross Domestic Product), a not exactly neutral measure of economic trends, with the LEA (Essential Levels of Assistance), an invention entrusted to the creativity of Minister Calderoli to justify differentiated regionalism, but the universal system of the SPI (Social Progress Index) produced by the studies of economists and sociologists of outstanding value, such as Amartha Sen, Michael Porter, Douglas North, Joseph Stiglitz. The social progress index was also drawn up and published by the European Union and places Italy in 22nd place; wouldn’t it be the case that it was also drawn up for the Italian regions and provinces?
Dear Secretary, I stole your precious time, but I did it because I trust that your age and your gender, as well as the family genes you carry within (our thoughts go to Sen. Agostino Viviani, who had the honor to know in distant youth), lead you to open a choral debate that addresses, among others, the problems that I have allowed myself to submit to you in circles, sections, foundations, and on all the communication channels that are available, for arrive at a multi-day National Convention, where young men and women who believe in political commitment as an instrument of democracy, freedom and well-being can express themselves and where those who already hold political roles are dutifully listening, giving up propaganda displays.
It would be nice to have an answer to this letter, but I won’t be offended if there isn’t. In any case, what matters is that the new Democratic Party is less and less the center of power for insiders and more and more the place for the reconstruction of a strong and participatory thought in our time of decreasing expectations and recurring attempts to return to past.
I wish you socialist greetings, using a formula that was once common among political militants who recognized themselves in that adjective.