The 2022 general elections not only revealed the widespread uncertainty and high demand for reassurance among female workers and workers Italians, but they have confirmed some trends, which are anything but episodic: distrust towards politics and increase ofabstentionism; social desease of the weaker workers, who have oriented their vote towards the right; broad skepticism towards the political offer of the centre-left, except for a small part of the urban middle classes. At the same time the great collective actors, such as i sindacati, forced to face the many daily material emergencies, have not proved capable of developing contractual and institutional strategies capable of looking ahead.
With the end of the anti-Covid regulations, in recent months the job market it has tried to compose itself, however leaving large pockets of dissatisfaction, both among workers and in companies. Many companies cannot find staff and just as many employees have resigned or do not find the jobs offered to them satisfactory.
FRAGILE CAPITALISMS: WHERE IS THE WORLD OF WORK GOING IN THE FURIOUS TWENTIES?
In this framework, evidence of the peripherality of work in public discourse and the substantial exclusion of the most vulnerable social groups, where is the world of work going? What are the most important changes underway and what should we expect ahead?
We are faced with a great tangle, not dissolved, in excited years that have been defined in an imaginative way - but not too much - the "furious twenties". And yet, there is a delay in many readings circulating today in the face of this upheaval, but also in the reactivity in the interventions of the institutions and of the classic players in industrial relations. We must realize that the productive panorama that surrounds us has changed in an irreversible way, that urban and working spaces have already been redesigned, and that requests for regulation and protection, previously unimagined, will press in the coming years. Around us we find a population of pickup trucks and delivery men who penetrate our lives, while the offices are partially uninhabited and forward-thinking companies are reorganizing - and simplifying - their spaces towards co-working methods. A world in which results tend to count more than traditional working hours. A world in which more than precariousness and discontinuity, a people engaged in a vast and heterogeneous tertiary universe seems to be taking shape, increasingly conditioned by large technological platforms, and imprisoned in a large number of 'small' jobs (mini-jobs), characterized by growing instability, stressful working hours, poor content and modest wages (which also helps to understand why so many reject them).
FRAGILE CAPITALISMS: MAJOR CHANGES BUT NOT YET A MAJOR TRANSFORMATION
In short, the great upheaval that is underway has not yet become a 'great transformation' for various reasons. Because the aftershocks of a process that technologies make unstoppable and continuous are still underway. Because its criticisms are starting with difficulty to make their way and to emerge, but so far they have not translated into a clear 'counter-movement', capable of keeping under control the most questionable and most unfavorable aspects for workers and of introducing strong practical alternatives. Because so far the large collective actors, such as the trade unions, forced to deal with the many daily material emergencies, have not proved capable of elaborating contractual and institutional strategies that are able to look ahead and show themselves fully up to these challenges (even if evolutionary steps, such as that of the regulation of the smart working, have been done, without being really conclusive).
In other words, the fever, which pre-existed the pandemic, continues to be high and is based on widespread and unresolved job insecurity, which has even increased for some sectors and groups. Basically, what we can observe is a scenario of work in motion and anything but pacified, which refers to the need for interventions reformists, both in terms of detail and newspapers, and of broader scope and design ambitions (starting from the relaunch of the public investments for the creation of higher quality jobs). In short, that activity of ordinary maintenance, but also of forced extraordinary rearrangement, of the world of work, which this situation requires in a more pressing way.
°°°The author is full professor of Sociology of work at the La Sapienza University of Rome
