Carlo Bonomi, new president of Confindustria, now the difficult part begins. To date he has shown that he knows how to act with an iron character, waterproof (but not indifferent) to the provocations that for at least six months have tried to question his status as an entrepreneur, for the sole purpose of unraveling the web woven for some time with the business world. Neither the brazen campaign implemented to favor Licia Mattioli in the media throughout the week preceding the vote, he was able to overturn the wide and convinced choice of support for the Milanese entrepreneur. An openly alternative candidacy to the desired one, prepared and managed by a confederal caste for too long accustomed to the "salary of Confindustria citizenship", thus defined by a shrewd frequenter of the upper floors of viale dell'Astronomia. The vote not only confirmed the assessment of the Wise Men, but, with double the preferences registered in favor of Bonomi, it certainly censured the capricious stabbing of the outgoing vice president.
Now the formal declarations of good work of the losers and their good intentions of collaboration must also be put in the attic to avoid the pollution of programs of change and reform of the representative system. The most striking example comes once again from Brescia. On the eve of the vote, the Council of their Association decided to publicly take sides, complete with a press release, for Mattioli, giving further proof of imprudence and demonstrating, if needed, to ignore the majority will of their colleagues , as well as when they had thrown their president Giuseppe Pasini prematurely entered the fray. Unfortunately it is the second time that the powerful Brescian association sinks its candidates for the presidency of Confindustria still stuck in the starting blocks.
Now Carlo Bonomi has the obligation to get on track an authoritative team, out of short-term conveniences. A team characterized by skills acquired in the field, in the factory, to confirm the commitments undertaken. The choice of vice presidents it will be emblematic; a choice assumed with responsibility in the first person, far from the party of the Roman salons and from the sirens of the big names and the big newspapers. It will be up to them to face, immediately, completely new, unforeseen situations, but such as to bring about profound changes in the country's manufacturing structure and in international economic relations. An example: the necessary reorganization of attendance at work, in the factory and in the offices, with the establishment of new unusual forms of shift work, will involve planning and organizational creativity, perhaps colliding with growing difficulties, but which could represent an opportunity for a strong recovery in productivity and economies of scale.
Of course, right from the start, in this temporal phase of design and empiricism, Confindustria must be ready to advance the proposal for a complete tax exemption of the part of the salary deriving from the new regime, from night shifts, public holidays and shift allowances. They will be able to do so replenish paychecks and return some liquidity to the balance sheets of Italian families. Immediately, I repeat, before Annamaria Furlan's Cisl unearths the ax of the generalized reduction of working hours.
On the land of the trade union relations, the need is felt to accelerate the decentralization (not only of the levels) of an effective bargaining in the categories to escape from the never dormant centralistic desire and to use the contractual matter for concertation purposes on which to base the relationship with politics.
It will be up to the new team to reopen the dusty and endless agenda of the corporate crises long inert at the Ministry of Economic Development. We have often raised from these columns the issue of LUIS and Sole24Ore, strategic opportunities for that too often threatened industrial culture. With international relations and in European domestic ones, perhaps an in-depth reflection on the top management election procedures, on the selection of the management, on the role of the territorial associations and above all of the categories, on their often functional and referential directions to the presidencies on duty. There is a lot of meat on the fire in the fireplace of Confindustria. It seems to me that Carlo Bonomi is in no hurry to serve it raw, but neither is he uncertain enough to make it burn. Congratulations.
