"We must not close the borders: we need immigrants to keep our social protection system in place". This is the appeal launched by the president of INPS, Tito Boeri, presenting the Institute's annual report in Montecitorio on Tuesday. "Today immigrants offer a very important contribution and this function of theirs is destined to grow in the coming decades - he added - The immigrants who come to us are increasingly younger: the share of under 25s who start contributing to INPS has gone from 27,5% in 1996 to 35% in 2015. In absolute terms, this means 150 more taxpayers every year. They compensate for the decline in births in our country, the most serious threat to the sustainability of our pension system".
According to INPS simulations, if we closed the doors to immigrants "over the next 22 years we would have 73 billion less social security contributions and 35 billion less social benefits for immigrants, with a negative net balance of 38 billion for the 'Inps. In short, one more trick to do every year to keep the accounts under control”.
Not only that: according to the Institute's surveys, "many immigrants leave our country before accruing the minimum contribution requirements and, even when they were entitled to it, in the past they often did not request payment of their pension - underlined Boeri again - in fact giving us their contributions: our conservative estimates are of a gift that is worth, to date, about one point of GDP".
As for how to strengthen the contribution of immigrants to the financing of our welfare state, according to the INPS number one "preventing them from having a residence permit when they are in Italy is the wrong path because it forces them to work illegally and pushes them into hands of crime. On the contrary, the regularizations have been the most powerful tool for the emergence of undeclared work activated up to now in our country and have had a lasting effect on the working behavior of immigrants: four out of five regularized workers were active contributors to our social protection system even 5 years after their regularisation".
MINIMUM SALARY
Boeri also spoke out in favor of the introduction of the minimum hourly wage, which would have the “double advantage of favoring the decentralization of bargaining and of offering a minimum wage base for that growing number of workers who escape the bargaining nets. The premises for introducing a minimum wage in Italy are already there. In fact, the new contract for occasional services, which will come into force in a few days, sets by law a minimum hourly wage (12 euros for the employer, 9 net of social security contributions in the worker's pocket) and also a minimum quantity of hours of work to be performed, also allowing control over the effective duration of the service. Hence the step is short to introduce a minimum hourly wage in our legal system. Today, paradoxically, the biggest detractors of the minimum wage are the trade unions. They fear that it takes away space for collective bargaining. On the contrary, the minimum wage covers the growing number of workers who today escape the bonds of collective bargaining".
As for the insertion income, "it is certainly a step forward compared to the many partial measures introduced in recent years (from Sia to Asdi, from the social card to the purchase card), but it is still a measure based on arbitrary categorical conditions ” and “the amount also seems too low”.
BLOCKING THE RETIREMENT AGE ADJUSTMENT IS DAMAGE TO CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN
On the social security front, according to the INPS President "blocking the adjustment of the retirement age to demographic trends is by no means a measure in favor of young people", because it "passes the costs of this failure onto our children and our children's children adjustment".
BONUS CONTRIBUTIONS TO START CAREER TO PUSH THE PERMANENT TEMPORARY
Rather, to help young people "we must look with concern at the less attractiveness of hiring with permanent contracts compared to fixed-term ones, once the strong contribution incentives of 2015 have been removed", continued Boeri, who in order to encourage stable assumptions proposed to "tax a component of social security contributions at the beginning of the working career". In this way, the risk would also be overcome, also highlighted by sending the 'orange envelopes', of "frequent episodes of non-employment at the beginning of the working career have very significant effects on the future pensions of those born after 1980 and is therefore entirely subject to the contributory regime". A phenomenon which, Boeri explained, is linked to the use of fixed-term contracts. More generally, according to Boeri, it would be “appropriate to reconsider the regime of fixed-term contracts, which transfer too much of the business risk to the worker, as they can be renewed as many as five times over three years. Above all, the interweaving between precariousness and social security coverage is worrying”.
NEW MEASURES FOR FEMALE EMPLOYMENT ARE NEEDED
The President of INPS then underlined the existence of "a strong positive relationship between female employment and the birth rate". The technicians of the institute have calculated that, if the employment rate among women remains at current levels, i.e. around 48,5%, by 2040, in the most optimistic hypotheses, the cumulative worsening of INPS accounts it would be around 41 billion, about two and a half points of GDP.
“The decline in births in Italy can be explained by the high costs of parenthood – Boeri continued – The potential income of working women undergoes a very marked drop (-35% in the first two years after the birth of the child), especially among women with a fixed-term contract, because it causes long periods of non-employment. It is therefore not surprising to note how the crisis has greatly reduced births (-20% in the north of the country). The costs of parenthood could be greatly contained not only by strengthening childcare services, but also and above all by promoting greater sharing of parenthood”.
The mandatory paternity leave introduced in 2012 went in this direction, but "it was not largely applied - Boeri said again - Two thirds of the new fathers did not even take the mandatory day in 2015, the year in which this measure was mostly adopted. If the goal of this law was to stimulate greater childcare burden sharing and to change the perceptions of employers reluctant to hire women of childbearing age, the result has been very disappointing. It is unthinkable to change attitudes if sanctions are not introduced for companies that violate the law and if one or two days of compulsory paternity leave are not taken. The change in culture and social norms that paternity leave is meant to foster cannot be encouraged with token leave."
