Giorgio Squinzi will be the new president of Confindustria. She won by only 11 votes Alberto Bombassei. A Confindustria never so divided. To be benevolent such a strong division can be attributed to the fact that both candidates have a similar entrepreneurial profile, have led their respective companies to global success, are old enough to exclude that we wanted to run for president to have some personal gain, and therefore the membership base did not want to express a clear preference for one or the other. Thinking badly, however, it can be assumed that the clash was between two consortia that oppose each other above all for the conquest of positions of power in the Confindustria organization, a bit like what happens, or rather what happened, in political parties where personal ambitions often win over proposals and plans for the future. The fact that the candidates obtained votes by promising positions on the presidential committee or in the companies controlled by the industrial federation system demonstrates that this type of competition for the choice of those who must not be considered a boss of the industrialists, as it is erroneously said, but one of their authoritative "spokespersons" has something wrong that risks undermining the very credibility of Confindustria.
Now anyway the new president is faced with very challenging choices and he will immediately have to demonstrate that he is not a slave to his own fans, precisely because it is absurd in a free association of companies to think in terms of majority and minority. In the first place it will have to say without too much ambiguity in which country the industrialists want to live and then not only ask politicians and trade unions to change, but demonstrate with concrete deeds, especially in matters of more direct competence, what are they willing to do to favor that change. Think, for example, of a more decisive policy against monopolies, of a stronger action in the field of infrastructure to clean up the sector from suspicions (often more than founded) of collusion with the political world, and obviously of the questions of the labor market and of the contract system. Many thought that the new president should not have grappled with the article 18 question as it had been superseded by the decisions of the Monti government.
However, it seems that the problem is not solved at all. The parliamentary halls will have to take care of it, while the CGIL threatens strikes and mobilizations to the bitter end. Confindustria can choose a sidelined attitude by continuing to say that the real problems are quite different, or undertake to explain why the reform of the labor market is a fundamental element of a redesign of the Italian production system in order to make it more competitive. The Monti government is working hard to change, through reforms, the culture of Italians, to restore their dynamism and greater optimism towards the future. Will Squinzi stand by him or will he choose the low profile of those who believe that it is only a question of the flag, with no real influence on the future of the country? So why in the XNUMXs did the industrialists wage a battle over the famous "decimals" of the escalator which were trifles with respect to the reform of the labor market?
The second question that can be asked of the new president concerns precisely the internal structures of Confindustria, the effectiveness and efficiency of which is now openly questioned by many associates. In this context, two problems stand out: how to eliminate the phenomenon of the spread of professional associationism, i.e. the many entrepreneurs who spend more time in associations than in their companies and who see climbing to the top as a means of social promotion and economic; and how we approach Fiat, which is still the largest Italian manufacturing company and which is now out of the membership system. Is a Confindustria still representative without Fiat? Of course, the Turin company has long been disliked by many small and medium-sized businesses because it is accused of arrogance. But isn't it true that the breakthroughs that have opened up recovery phases for all of Italian industry, like that of 80, or like the one regarding Marchionne's company contracts, really started from Fiat?
The third question that could be asked of Squinzi concerns Luiss. What is Confindustria maintaining control of this University for? If it's just to ensure a seat for some former president with a lack of visibility, it's certainly not worth it. Then we need to understand what cultural policy we want to implement and if a university is really needed for this, it is enough about having promoted it almost forty years ago now, and it is not convenient at this point to leave it in the hands of the market as, moreover, authoritative scholars among the such as Gustavo Visentini.
Finally, the fourth question concerns Il Sole 24 Ore. By now the newspaper is increasingly considered as a tool available to the presidency of Confindustria to participate in the debate on the country's economic policy. It is the effect of the turning point given to the newspaper by the former president D'Amato and by his director general, Parisi, who abandoned the inspiration of Agnelli and Carli to offer the Italian economy a free and qualified organ of information to the market service, i.e. as guardian of transparency and respect for the rules, to instead transform it into a house organ at the service of Confindustria requests and, inevitably, of the needs of its major companies. If Il Sole has suffered a decline in copies for a decade, this is perhaps also due to the loss of credibility that the D'Amato breakthrough has caused. Now what do you want to do? Continue with the same philosophy, perhaps giving Marcegaglia the presidency, or do you want to resume the path glimpsed with the quotation on the Stock Exchange but never really embarked on, so much so that the quotation, as it was then made, turned out to be a colossal fiasco? The authority of Confindustria for many years was based on its diversity with respect to current political trends, a diversity also demonstrated by having promoted, with Il Sole 24 Ore, a free newspaper different from the organs of the parties and from Rai. Do you want to recover that truly liberal inspiration open to the market, or do you want to have a small instrument of pressure (which more often than not proves to be a pure illusion) by aiming to divide up the seats of its plethoric Board of Directors?
There are so many other issues. But Squinzi, who is a business man and therefore pragmatic, will soon realize that he will have to deal with these four knots if he really wants to put Confindustria at the head of a profound process of change that Italian society badly needs. In fact, how can you ask others to change, if you don't first show that you know how to change internally?
