The decisions taken by the Government with the Atlante fund for the rehabilitation of the banking system highlight the gravity of the situation, bringing to light, if ever there were any need, one of the causes of the country's low growth. Episodes have occurred in the life of our banking institutions that a short time ago would have been unthinkable. On 2 April, the shareholders' meeting of UBI handed over the bank to investment funds which obtained 51% of the votes. The news, which received less prominence than it deserved, marks a clamorous defeat of that particular "relationship capitalism" often in a family version.
After the events of Monte dei Paschi and the Etruria system, the serious anomalies of some large banks, popular and otherwise, all over the industrialized and "European" north come to a head, where groups of shareholders, minority but well organized, have de facto monopolized the credit management too often in terms of patronage and full conflict of interest. Suffice it to recall the disbursement of loans aimed at buying shares or subscribing capital increases to cover losses. It goes without saying that the value of securities has collapsed and the credits of institutions will end up in "not performing loans".
Many of the children and grandchildren of those captains of industry who contributed to the country's rebirth after the war and who had built their power on a solid network of bipartisan political relationships have come away with broken bones. The press, more understandably the local one, has not shown an ability and willingness to investigate and report equal to that of the major national or international investigative campaigns. Change can take place by relying on external forces, as did the princes and dukes of the ancient Italian states, accepting the hegemonic role of the national states of the time.
Or you can leverage instruments created in agreement with the EU institutions, as the Italian government is doing. The moral, however, is simple, those who do not govern inexorably leave the task of doing so to others. But what can stakeholders do, primarily employees, who risk paying a very high price? An incisive action by the trade union organizations is needed, which must impose a transparent co-management of the recovery of the sector. It is necessary to be aware that the full assumption of one's own responsibilities by each of the subjects in the field is a necessary condition to reduce the most serious damages.
But since no one has a nose ring, serious guarantees are needed. In the XNUMXs, imports of steel and automobiles brought domestic manufacturers to their knees in the United States. At the same time, air transport, then symbolized by Twa and Pan Am, was engulfed in a deep crisis. An important contribution came from the allocation of portions of salaries (present and future) to the capital increase of the companies, giving rise to substantial shareholdings of the workers, represented on the boards of directors.
A minority part of the American union polemically defined these agreements, moreover accepted with the vote of all the interested parties, as "buy back dealing". Of course, not all that glitters is gold. Not all the realities involved survived the crisis, but the cure worked as a whole. Even today that model is still in place for millions of workers, with an estimated one million employees controlling an absolute majority of their company. Economic, social, cultural and political reasons lead us not to mechanically transfer the experiences of a reality like the American one to a European country like Italy.
But the need for a strong exchange between business and workers, based on vast common interests, is the condition for creating a truly equal relationship on strategic choices that guarantees an effective defense of jobs. In the case of banks, but not only, without a strong proposal, the union would be left with a defense position, entirely understandable but very weak, which would risk being overwhelmed by one-way restructurings without any guarantees.
In these days a decree should materialize to encourage the distribution of shares to employees but it seems that the available resources are scarce. Maybe it's time to make it a truly effective "share economy" tool. Just as every citizen, for better or for worse, is in fact a shareholder and partner of common ownership, so at the level of individual companies, workers should become partners in economic activity in a participatory logic that removes the inevitable (and necessary) union conflict from any antagonistic character.
