It will be up to Prime Minister Mario Draghi to try on Monday to remedy the big mess that the Minister of Labor, Andrea Orlando, has made on the blocking of layoffs. With difficulty, the Government and the social partners had agreed on the end of the blockade and the smooth exit in two stages from the freeze on layoffs started at the beginning of the pandemic but which everyone believes cannot last indefinitely, unless healthy companies are penalized and artificially keep alive the technically failed ones.
But with a surprise blitz Orlando changed the cards on the table on the eve of the last Council of Ministers by inserting the extension of the blockade until the end of August in the Sostegni bis decree. Open up heaven. There Confindustria it considered itself mocked by Orlando and the opening headline of today's Il Sole 24 Ore leaves no room for misunderstandings: "Layoffs, Orlando's deception". It was precisely the tensions triggered by the coup by the Minister of Labor that effectively blocked the publication in the Official Gazette of the highly anticipated Sostegni bis decree, which allocates 40 billion to give the Italian economy a breather in view of the exit from the pandemic.
The move by Orlando, the minister close to the maximalist wing of the Democratic Party (the one who, under the leadership of the ineffable Goffredo Bettini, fought ingloriously to the cry of "O Conte o morte"), turns his back on the decree Supports 1 just approved by Parliament which provided for a double exit from the blockade of layoffs and from the free layoffs-Covid: as of 30 June for manufacturing and construction and from 31 October for all other sectors and mainly for the tertiary sector and SMEs. A solution also endorsed by Prime Minister Mario Draghi who will take up the thorny issue again tomorrow.
Contrary to what was agreed and approved by Parliament, the blitz by the Minister of Labor foresees two novelties: 1) if a company requests the Covid-19 cig by the end of June, the block on layoffs will be extended until 28 August; 2) from July XNUMX, if a company uses the ordinary redundancy fund it does not pay the surtaxes but it cannot fire while using the fund.
Now Confindustria complains the inapplicability of the new law and above all he censures the fact that in this way legal certainty is called into question while the reform of social safety nets and the launch of active labor policies are languishing. The vice president of Confindustria, Maurizio Stirpe, says it clearly in Il Sole 24 Ore, according to whom the postponement of the block on layoffs to the end of August "is wrong on the merits but also on the method" and undermines "the reliability of relations between us and the minister". According to Stirpe, the Minister of Labor continues “to indulge those who scream the loudest and who are most frightening, like a part of the union. But it is not the right path” because it is a way of doing politics that pursues consensus rather than seriously solving the problems, which would require finally addressing the reform of social safety nets and active labor policies.
