Will there be an eighth safeguard as requested by the lobbies of the so-called exodus and their "lord protectors" in Parliament? The theme is once again topical among the many social security topics that are on the agenda on television talk shows. However, the time has come to state out loud that the "scandal" does not lie in the phenomenon itself but in the false social alarm raised and fed by the media "in search of lost time" as well as in the onerous seven safeguards set up by governments ( the latest in the stability law for 2016) with massive resources worthy of better use.
We find confirmation of our criticisms in a Focus (No. 2/2016), edited by Nicola Carmine Salerno on behalf of the Parliamentary Budgetary Office (UPB) dedicated, in fact, to this typically Italian story. Let's start with the numbers. At the end of 2015, the planned coverage of the safeguards reached 196.530 subjects (170.230 for the first six and 26.300 for the seventh).
After the overall reprogramming envisaged in the aforementioned stability law (law n.208/2015), the programmed quota is reduced to 172.466 subjects (deriving from the reduction to 146.166 of those interested in the first six safeguards - as a result of the reduction of overestimated initial estimates - to to which must be added 26.300 of the seventh) for a total expenditure of just over 11,4 billion euros in the period 2013-2023 (9,9 billion of the first six plus 1,5 billion of the seventh). In this regard, the Focus recalls that INPS attributes to the seven safeguards the erosion of around 13% of the cost savings (88 billion) obtainable, in a decade from its entry into force, thanks to the Fornero reform of 2011.
The other interesting fact, as regards the interaction between the redundancy issue and the reform, emerges from the weight that these "protected" treatments (by the application of the previous rules) have had on the number of old-age and seniority pensions paid in the last years. In 2014, 189.835 pensions were paid out for this reason, with an incidence of approximately 11% on the average flow of those safeguarded.
In 2015, the 251.294 new old-age and seniority pensions corresponded to an incidence of the "safeguarded" ones of approximately 8,3%. Of the 170.230 subjects of the quota programmed in the set of the first six safeguards, the applications were accepted 115.967, those rejected 51.518. 83.396 treatments were liquidated, while 5.566 applications remain to be examined. A certain generosity of the estimates is therefore confirmed.
In fact, by examining the trends of the various protected categories, it turns out that only 68% of the programmed quota was able to make use of them. The only two categories that exceeded the indicated objectives were civil servants exempted, at their request, from service and, above all, those on leave or leave to assist family members with serious disabilities (twice the number of the quota): which is extremely significant of a "welfare" case study that is very widespread in the public administration thanks to which not only are the leave granted during the employment relationship generous, but even the old rules of retirement are maintained.
Furthermore, the Report does not give up making policy assessments, noting how, with the progress of the safeguards, there has been a transformation of the objectives which, after the reform, justified the derogations. The afterthoughts, favored by information uncertainties, have led - writes the Upb - to the start of a process of almost complete protection of the expectations of those who have undergone or voluntarily opted for changes in the working sphere even many years before the Fornero reform and who they waited for the pension to start with the old rules even in times long after the reform.
To give some examples, the following have been admitted as safeguards: those who left work before and after the reform and who were already authorized to continue voluntarily, even if re-employed with a contract other than a permanent contract; those who had already applied for exemption from public work, even on the basis of regional laws and even if the exemption had not yet started; those already involved in agreements for the use of social safety nets, even if the start of layoffs or the cessation of work took place several years after the reform (by 2014 and 2016 respectively).
If the sequence of safeguard interventions were to continue, the progressive change of objective of these measures would emerge with ever greater clarity: not an exemption specifically addressed to workers who find themselves in economic difficulty in the years between the cessation of activity and the perception of the first pension due to the changes introduced by the Fornero reform (i.e. the redundancies in the strict sense), but a solution to shelter wider audiences and not necessarily, or not all, directly damaged by the reform, using safeguards as a substitute for passive labor policies or other welfare institutions that are currently undersized or absent.
Regardless of the merit assessment of these additional purposes, this trend makes the design of policies and the priorities of public action less transparent. In addition, it overlaps - stigmatizes the Upb - in an insufficiently coordinated way with the process of the Jobs Act and with the revision of social safety nets, which also ends up subtracting resources.
