The breaking of the link between the dynamics of productivity and real wages, albeit a phenomenon common to all developed countries, takes on a very particular declination in Italy. While elsewhere it occurred with a growth in productivity, in Italy, this separation was instead accompanied by an almost zero increase in productivity, as emerges from a report by the European Commission dating back to a year ago. Also the
productivity growth, when it exists, is largely explained by the reduction of employment and not by the growth of production: labor suffers from wage reductions and reductions in employment. How to handle these issues? The knot was addressed in a conference held at the Faculty of Economics of Sapienza in Rome.
Also because flexibility, introduced starting from, has proved to be ineffective in stimulating productivity
from the Treu package of 97, and recourse to decentralized bargaining, which is limited to 30% of industrial companies with over 20 employees (Giugni Commission), which has not been matched by the hoped-for structural reform of the product market.
In this scenario of decline, a panel of renowned economists questioned themselves on Tuesday 4 June on the initiatives to be undertaken to activate a virtuous mechanism that triggers and supports productivity growth. Several of these focus on the role of bargaining.
The debated thesis consists in the need for the Government and the social partners to agree to achieve a planned growth rate of productivity, defined by sector, sector, supply chain and territory, so as to take into account the heterogeneity of the Italian production system. According to Marcello Messori, of the Luiss University of Rome, it is a question of establishing those average increases in labor productivity that can reduce Italian delays with respect to competing countries and of transferring a significant share of these increases to current workers' wages. The cost of labor thus increases for all companies due to national bargaining, continue Davide Atonioli and Paolo Pini, professors in Ferrara, therefore companies that want to reach and exceed the programmed objectives, appropriating higher profits, will have to embark on a technological change and organizational with the active participation of the workforce.
Particular emphasis is given to the role of work organization as a lever on which to act to obtain increases in productivity, as well as relying on the renewed purchasing power of wages to support domestic demand. In relation to this, Messori argues that Italian companies have failed to adopt the new paradigm of innovation, namely the organizational one. In fact, continues the Luiss professor, Italian companies, which do not look bad in international comparisons in terms of the amount of investments made, have however been unable to
move on to the organizational innovations of the current era of «information and communication technology», which require dimensional leaps and full integration between manufacturing and services, while remaining tied to the incremental innovations of the XNUMXs and XNUMXs.
Among the causes of the delay are the ownership structure of family capitalism, in terms of lack of separation between ownership and control rather than property rights, and the unfavorable external environment, which does not offer elements of support (externalities) to those who compete on the market , but rewards pension recipients. If we look at the companies that exited the market during the crisis, we see that these are not the least efficient but the least protected, often the best among non-exporting companies.
These aspects are at the basis of the malfunctioning of Schumpeter's "creative destruction" in Italy, which is strongly distorted due to these market failures, and which cannot be trusted, not only for the serious damage it would cause to employment. The incentive nature of the proposed programmed productivity objective is important, an element which underlies the expected virtuous circle, and the idea of distinguishing the aspects relating to
distribution of productivity gains from those related to productivity determinants.
