We don't know if Minister Nunzia Catalfo will celebrate the anniversary (obviously observing the ban on gatherings), but today the Ministry of Labor turns 100 years old. It was established by Royal Decree number 700 of 3 June 1920, during the final phase of the second Nitti government. Recounts in great detail that event - which marked a change of direction towards the world of work and its problems - the historian of the institutions Flavio Quaranta in an essay on n.94 of the Vercelli Historical Bulletin.
The first to hold the post of Minister of Labor was Senator Mario Abbiate, well known in the province of Vercelli since the early years of the last century. Forty points out that the choice of the emergency decree was not an unusual practice; already for some fundamental insurance and social security provisions issued in that period - such as the establishment in 1917 of the compulsory insurance against agricultural accidents or, in 1919, that of invalidity, old age and involuntary unemployment - it had been necessary to intervene immediately, both to bear witness to the country's gratitude towards the popular classes, above all peasants, who had suffered the consequences of the war more than others, and to stem the tensions of the violent social conflict underway in those troubled times, immediately following the Great War.
The creation of the Ministry of Labour, which took place after twenty years of discussions and proposals, was a qualifying part of the political program of the Nitti government, based on a project of “productivist reformism” aimed at closely uniting the state, production and work, giving the public authorities the task of coordinating and directing the forces involved. Previously, labor issues were dealt with by the Ministry of Agriculture, Industry and Commerce. The new social insurance legislation required a specific policy direction: Mario Abbiate held that position for a few days, but his appointment was a recognition of the commitment he had made in his political activity to the separation of labor politics from those of productive activities.
Have – writes Quaranta – he was born in Genoa on 14 February 1872 to Giuseppe Abbiate from Garibaldi and Erminia Montalenti, originally from Caresana (then in the Province of Novara, halfway between Vercelli and Casale Monferrato), in a building located in the San Teodoro district. After obtaining a law degree from the University of Turin in 1893, he practiced law practice, which he soon left to enter public life in Vercelli. Municipal councilor in Caresana from 1895 to 1899, from 1899 to 1903 he was part of the provincial administrative council of Novara, where he demonstrated his great legal culture. In 1902 he was provincial councilor of the districts of Stroppiana and Desana. Important year in his political-administrative career was 1903, when he became a member of the Superior Labor Council, just established, as representative of the Italian Federation of Mutual Aid Societies.
Abbiate – among the first to understand how this consultative body (which accompanied the Labor Office also established in 1903) could have become a point of reference for a political-administrative action for social promotion – was an authoritative member for its entire duration, i.e. until 1923, when was suppressed by fascism. Member of the standing committee, he assiduously participated in all the works of the Council, participating in important ones surveys on the conditions of Italian workers: from farmers to sulphate workers, from bakers to tobacco workers, becoming the first signatory, in 1910, of a proposal to reform the Council itself, with Angiolo Cabrini and Cesare Saldini, in which his transformation, albeit at an embryonic level, into a chamber made up of all the social parties was hypothesized.
An exponent of the progressive liberal current, Abbiate, after entering the Vercelli municipal council in 1905, arrived at a very young age in the Italian Parliament. In fact, he was elected deputy in the XXIII legislature at the age of 37, in the elections of March 1909, in which he managed to prevail over the candidate of the moderate liberal party, Piero Lucca. He did not join a precise group, even if historiography places him, like Nitti, among the radicals. For both, radicalism was a culture of government entirely within liberalism, with specific attention to the popular masses, of course, but without having to adhere to the socialist ideology, nor abdicate the leadership of social reformism. His political vocation was always marked by a profound sense of sociability, which resulted in constant attention to the problems of work.
On the proposal of the Prime Minister, Francesco Saverio Nitti, on 6 October 1919 he was appointed Senator of the Kingdom. At the time, Abbiate was the youngest member of the Upper Chamber (47 years old) but such was his expertise in labor law that, despite having only one legislature - which was not a sufficient title - he was appointed thanks to a specific provision of the Statute Albertino, without any objections being raised. As Minister of Labor he was unable to rely on his experience and knowledge of the matter, because the Nitti government of which he was a part fell a short time later.
Abbiate was succeeded by the former revolutionary syndicalist Arturo Labriola, in the last Giolitti government, which was followed by the Nittiano Albert Beneduce (destined to write important pages in the twenty years, becoming the architect of the IRI) and the social reformist Arnaldo Dello Sbarba. The last Minister of Labor was the Popular Stefano Cavazzoni. For a couple of years, Giovanni Maria Longinotti from Brescia, one of the signatories of Don Sturzo's popular party, acted as undersecretary. By royal decree of 27 April 1923, no. 915, the Ministry of Labor was abolished, almost simultaneously with the closure of the worthy Higher Labor Council. From it will be born the Ministry of National Economy.
Faced with the new state of affairs produced by the march on Rome in 1922, the old holders of the dicastery almost all adapted to the fait accompli. So it was not for Mario Abbiate, who left the political scene. Forty remember that the Corriere della Sera in 1943 he asked Abbiate to write, for the archives in via Solferino, the events of his life which he considered most significant. Abbiate replied: "Nothing could be said about me except this, that I have correctly professed my political faith and have never repudiated or traded it". After World War II Mario Abbiate – as Quaranta recalls – wrote a letter to Prime Minister Ferruccio Parri to plead for the reconstruction of the Department of Labor and Social Security which will be reborn again independent, with lieutenant decree n. 377 of 21 June 1945. Abbiate died in 1954.
