The attempt to build a single labor market by making the economic regulations and the contractual treatment of the private and the public homogeneous, despite the "privatization" of the contract of civil servants, is still far from the finish line. Just think of the incredible story of the inapplicability, according to the government, of the new article 18 of the Job's Act to public workers. But above all the battle to begin is that of the application of effective meritocratic models, the recognition of responsibility and, above all, the transparent verification of results.
After a long period of "freezing", made inevitable by the disastrous conditions of the public finances, the negotiations for the renewal of public employment contracts have reopened. The solutions do not yet seem at hand because the appropriations provided for in the stability law are sufficient to cover only the contractual holiday allowances. Regardless of the resources, which are also a big problem, it is a difficult task to rebuild a contractual system paralyzed by decades of weary repetition of inadequate models.
The contradictions caused by some values rooted in the country's culture inevitably reappear, such as that of egalitarianism which represented the ideological by-product of equality. The egalitarian conception pervaded the entire contractual system of republican Italy, starting from the private one, in the illusory belief that a progressive reduction of wage differences would guarantee social justice. This occurred through the narrowing of the salary parameters and the trend towards uniformity of salaries at national level. The policy of equal increases for all followed this logic, along with the cancellation of the "wage cages", the single value of the escalator point, which in the years of double-digit inflation flattened wage differentials to an abnormal extent. Naturally, the first to pay the price were the trade unions, which saw their authority over wages significantly reduced.
Realism, accompanied by the awareness acquired among workers of the need for change, then took the upper hand in the private work sectors where the path of differentiated increases, productivity bonuses and, above all, company and territorial bargaining has been taken for some time now . It is no coincidence that today metalworkers are discussing giving centrality to decentralized bargaining. However, we must not underestimate the impasse and the strategic nature of the contractual renewal of metalworkers. Perhaps we should hope for government intervention with an award (take it or leave it) as happened almost fifty years with the unforgettable Donat Cattin. At the same time, both in the Government and in Confindustria, the idea is gaining ground of cutting contributions for contracts with increasing protections to increase the tax relief for productivity agreements, expanding the number of beneficiaries.
These changes have not really affected the public sector (including the world of education which has considered the maintenance of seniority steps a success) where, with the exception of the larger local authorities, the contractual structure has remained centralized and the exchange has between political consensus and patronage management without checking either the efficiency or effectiveness of the Public Administration. The centralized and egalitarian structure has kept away a modern system of contractual relations and has paralyzed a system which by its nature leaves little room for merit and professionalism. There has never been a desire to intervene at the foundations to avoid the systematic flow of civil servants hired in the north and transferred to the south. It should come as no surprise that today a significant number of teachers living in the south consider the assignment of a professorship in Milan or Turin a sort of "deportation". In reality, for years the teachers (coming from any part of Italy) who worked in these realities have been sacrificed. And it is undeniable that the real salary of civil servants tends to be higher in the south than in the north. It is one of the most ignored aspects of the "Northern question". Of course, the main political issue is the recognition of merit, professionalism, responsibility and the checks that follow, but paradoxically, in the absence of an effective decentralized salary policy, the solution would be the return to differentiated salaries not only for professional levels but also for territories , since it is difficult to maintain that the purchasing power of wages is homogeneous across the territory. Naturally, the horror of the "return to wage cages" would arise loud and clear in one part of the country. It will be very hard to get out of the confines of a single thought that has prevented us from reflecting on the failures of egalitarian ideology. But what in the name of continuing to punish public workers who come from all over Italy but live where the cost of living is much higher than in the rest of the country?
