The results of the Observatory of Carlo Cottarelli, the former Mister spending review, on pay inequalities in the world of work will cause much discussion from which it emerges, contrary to what is often believed, that on average public administration workers earn much more than private company workers.
In the historical reconstruction of wages carried out by the Observatory, which is based at the Catholic University of Milan, it is noted that the gap between public and private workers between 1980 and 2016 was on average 27% in favor of the former with peaks of 40% at the turn of the 80s and 90s but also between 2000 and 2007 when the centre-right governments were in power.
Today the difference between public salaries and private salaries fluctuates, according to Cottarelli's calculations, around 18% but the gap is destined to widen due to the effect of new government contracts, which are 3 million and 400 thousand and which represent one of the major expenditure items of the public budget.
This re-proposes, above all in a moment of growth of the Italian economy beyond expectations, the need to correct the imbalances and to adjust the wages and salaries of the employees of private companies by linking them to productivity increases to be negotiated at company level. A choice that would also make it possible to push the inflation pedal with moderation, as the ECB itself has been recommending for some time.
