i come first effects of the Dignity Decree. With the introduction of the reasons for the renewal of fixed-term contracts, companies (if they do not decide to transform them to open-ended contracts, which is desirable but not always possible) in order to avoid the risk of legal disputes, prefer to hire other workers with fixed-term contracts from scratch, in turn destined to be largely replaced. For the company, this regulation constitutes yet another bureaucratic obstacle but the real damage lies in the fact that the non-extension throws away a precious training period and above all deprives the worker concerned of a possibility of exiting precariousness since the renewals of fixed-term contracts, like it or not, also perform the function of a probationary period . In Milan, roughly 4-5.000 each month can be estimated as the number of those who will be out of work from November onwards and will be able to apply for NASPI (as unemployment benefit is called today).
Of these, a few hundred are employees of companies owned by the municipality such as SeA, Amsa, Milano Ristorazione and, precisely because of the Dignity Decree as the unions are well aware, they risk being left at home. Despite the fact that two councilors from Forza Italia and the PD, Fabrizio De Pasquale and Laura Specchio have raised the issue, the City Council does not even appear to have discussed it. The chiefs of staff concerned, who are not certain lionhearts, minimize and declare themselves committed to discussing "case by case". On the other hand, union leaders are amazed who, despite having the possibility of (at least) asking employers to sign an agreement to amend the Dignity Decree on the basis of article 8 of Legislative Decree 138 of 2011, go "on the hunt of butterflies under Tito's arch”, pursuing the maximalist goal (which saves the soul but yields no results) of asking for permanent employment for everyone.
The union could and should, if it deems the extension of fixed-term contracts an objective, albeit minimal but one that has a priority nature, push all businesses, starting from municipal and regional ones, to get to the most important private business organizations (which all have distanced clearly from the Dignity Decree) to sign an agreement to use the little-known “Article 8” which allows the majority of social partners to derogate from labor laws. This happened recently at the " Fenice " on the initiative of the trade union organizations themselves and the Municipality of Venice who decided to postpone the entry into force of part of the Dignity Decree by one year. This has been the case without much fanfare in many other realities where, albeit in difficult circumstances, agreements have been signed that are worse than the contractual conditions in place to avoid layoffs.
The so-called "Article 8" is a sort of partial anticipation of article 39 of the Constitution which, as is known, attributes general effectiveness to the contractual agreements signed by the majority of workers and companies, recognizing to workers' and employers' trade union organizations the role of source of legal production. In Milan, however, for the moment only an independent union has tried to negotiate a solution "in derogation" to the Dignity Decree to save the job of temporary workers, but was outvoted.
The Milanese trade unions, also in consideration of their tradition and their strength, should do much more. They could, starting from a rigorous analysis of real situations, set themselves the goal of a claiming, corporate and territorial strategy not only to modify the Dignity Decree, starting with the restoration of the old regulations on fixed-term contracts but to go further to intervene, in the name of the contractual autonomy of the parties, on all the other provisions of law and contract where it was possible and useful to reach agreements with the employers.
Instead they pound the water in a mortar. Do they fear that the Government will react and make things worse or do they actually agree with Di Maio because they think that in the end the non-renewal of a fixed-term contract is only a "physiological" increase in turnover? Don't they want to explicitly use a law of the Republic (which in other circumstances serves very well, but without saying so, as a lifeline) because it was approved by a Parliament whose majority was centre-right? Yet those who risk their jobs are, to use a frequent expression on the left, "women and men in the flesh" to which names, surnames and families correspond. We should reflect. It does not seem that everything possible is being done to avoid the loss of jobs and the responsibility also lies with those in the union who have so far given up on fulfilling their role.
