The INPS procedure for the use of voucher in agriculture after the simplification introduced by the Dignity Decree, passed into law at the beginning of the month. Among the novelties, the lengthening of the duration from 3 to 10 days within which it is possible to carry out the occasional service.
Secondo Coldiretti, with vouchers “about 50 casual jobs can be recovered with transparency in seasonal activities in the countryside where they are employed only for the activities carried out by unemployed, layoffs, pensioners and young students who were not agricultural workers the previous year”.
With the return of vouchers to agriculture, the association underlines in a note, “the original principles are reaffirmed without the abuses that have occurred in other sectors and ensures the sector an agile, flexible tool that simplifies by responding above all to a criterion of timeliness typical of an activity conditioned by nature but which also offers an opportunity to supplement the income of the weakest categories".
Before being abolished in 2017, the vouchers had been introduced in 2008 with an INPS circular which for the first time authorized the grape harvest through work vouchers. Subsequently, the possibility of using the vouchers was also extended to other agricultural activities, but - underlines Coldiretti - the sector "remained faithful to the original "experimental" discipline with all the initial limitations (only seasonal work and only pensioners, students, redundant workers and the unemployed) unlike the other productive sectors”.
Less than 2% of total vouchers – continues the association – was used in agriculture, “where job vouchers were born and represent a valid contribution to the emergence of undeclared work. It is no coincidence that the number of vouchers used in agriculture has practically remained stable since 2011, without the abuses that have occurred in other sectors. In agriculture, just over 2 million vouchers were sold in the last five years before the repeal, more or less the same as in the previous 5 years, equal to approximately 350 days of work per year. The total value of the income supplements granted for services to pensioners, students, layoffs and the unemployed amounts - concludes Coldiretti - to around 22 million euros a year while the region where the most employees have been employed is Veneto with just over a quarter of the total".
