Mariastella Gelmini was minister of education, university and research in the Berlusconi government from 8 May 2008 to 16 November 2011. In the last legislature she was a member of parliament in the Forza Italia group in the Chamber of Deputies, where she is also a candidate in this session in the plurinominal constituency of Milan.
Work remains the central theme of our political agenda and will be the subject of our first government measures. In a labor market characterized by profound transformations, we need to change the approach of the '900, to face the latest digital revolution and the technological evolution of Industry 4.0. With the global opening of the market and the acceleration of production processes, the topography of work also radically changes. The large twentieth-century factory disappears, with well-defined physical perimeters and a Fordist organization of work.
Work paths are no longer linear, usually starting and finishing in the same company. The work becomes more fluid, almost liquid, and career trajectories become discontinuous and fragmented crossing different experiences and contexts. Even the historical forms of job protection are no longer adequate, because they have to be moved from the employment relationship to the labor market.
In this scenario, our first provision will be aimed at the definitive construction of that system of active employment policies, that the Jobs Act failed to accomplish, making it shipwreck between the unexpected referendum result of the constitutional reform and the fake cancellation of the provinces that own the public system of employment services. Having confirmed the framework of the division of constitutional responsibilities between the State and the Regions, we will redefine the role of ANPAL - the National Agency for Active Labor Policies - bringing it back within the perimeter of the functions of verifying compliance with the Essential Performance Levels for all workers, regardless of the Region of residence, with the further possibility of activating substitute powers in those Regions in default.
We will leave the Regions free to adopt the labor market organizational model most suitable for satisfying the needs of the various territories, with the involvement of private operators in a subsidiary function with respect to the Employment Centres, to offer people who lose their jobs the best assistance to minimize the duration of unemployment and the transition times from one job to another. The system of active policies that we will implement will be universal because it can be used by all regardless of the duration of the state of unemployment and the perception of passive policies.
With the same first measure, we will tackle the problem of youth unemployment, definitively configuring the apprenticeship as the contract for first entry into the labor market with the zeroing of contributions for its entire maximum three-year duration and with a subsequent three-year contribution reduction in the event of transformation into an open-ended contract. In this way, for younger workers we will guarantee tax-free job placement paths up to 6 years, with the correlated possibility of a sort of tax-free personal gift. Through the "portability" of the hiring bonus, the contribution relief follows the young person and can therefore also be recognized to employers other than those in which he carried out his apprenticeship.
With reality approach, our proposal aims to encourage permanent contracts through targeted incentive reward mechanisms, without forcing the choices of companies, avoiding any pedagogical or disciplinary approach.
We will tackle youth unemployment also through the training offeroriented towards the world of business and innovation, through the dual system of school-work alternation and first and third level training apprenticeship, which allows young people to achieve all secondary or tertiary level qualifications, working . We will enhance this professionalizing training chain, especially in the tertiary segment, with an important investment in Higher Technical Institutes (ITS), making them real Smart Academies oriented towards technology transfer and applied research.
From this point of view, the progressive increase of ITS resources which will reach a total of 48 million from 2020 certainly represents an important first step, at least in recognition of the need to increase investment. However, the increase in resources alone is not sufficient, because it is necessary to intervene on the reorganization of the legislation to define a certain regulatory framework, within which the autonomy of the Higher Technical Education system is strengthened and the governance of the Foundations themselves is simplified, so that this educational segment regains the vigor and impetus necessary to grow and consolidate.
Finally, we will concretely guarantee the right to study with the "school bonus" tool, to also ensure the freedom of educational choice of students and families. Through the construction of a standard cost of sustainability, we will give families a nominal voucher which will represent a loan of the same amount for public, state and private educational and training institutions, freely chosen by students and their families, generating that competitive tension in the system to continuous improvement which will lead to an increase in the overall quality of the entire education and training system.
