It is truly trivial political demagoguery to hear the secretary of the Democratic Party and the head of 5 Star think that the introduction of minimum wage of 9 euros the hour may suddenly bring so much more money into the pockets of the working poor. If a law were enough to make everyone a little richer we would be much happier! And it amazes even more that calenda, secretary of a liberal party, can join such nonsense without even mentioning the issue of Italian productivity that has been stagnant for over twenty years, and which explains why wages have risen much less here than in other European countries.
But let's try to understand what it is about beyond the more political arguments used by the opposition to try to corner the government accused of insensitivity towards the millions of poor workers who also have to suffer the hard blows of the inflation picks up. Government that is said, incidentally, stutters, because it does not have people who have effective experience in the field of industrial relations and is not even capable of consulting experts.
The unions respond with bargaining
First, you have to remember if you haven't made a minimum wage in past years it's because of opposition from the unions (Cgil in primis) who fear that the minimum wage could reduce the role of the national contract which is the pivot on which their power rests. Now this opposition has been overcome thanks to the formulation of the opposition law proposal which, as highlighted by Giampaolo Galli (economist and former director general of Confindustria) provides that for each economic sector the minimum level below which the unions "representative at national level" cannot go down is that of 9 euros. And that the level established by the unions is compulsorily extended erga omnes. In short, all companies in a given sector should be obliged to comply with the provisions of the contract stipulated by the most representative trade unions which at national level are only CGIL, CISL, UIL and perhaps Ugl. And even the workers will be pigeonholed in their sectors without needing to be consulted.
The legal minimum wage and industrial relations
In this way, Galli argues, he is saved minimum salary e national contract with a further stiffening of industrial relations, and a de facto nationalization of labor relations. The State would decide how much to earn both by acting on the tax lever (reduction of the wedge, or detaxation of the thirteenth salary, etc.) and by financing smaller companies with a special fund that should help them apply the minimum wage. If industrial relations become more rigid and bureaucratic, cases such as that of Fiat which, upon leaving, Confindustria was able to draw up a contract more suited to its needs with the agreement of factory workers expressed in a referendum, or that of Ita which managed not to apply the railway contract dominated by the FS, will no longer be possible.
The objective link between wage growth and increased productivity
It is clear that the minimum wage makes sense if it serves to reduce the burden of national bargaining and lead, instead, to enhance the corporate one where effective exchanges can be made between the worker's commitment and his remuneration. The trade unions would have considerable space provided that the measure of the minimum wage is set at a level around 50-60% of the median wage and not at 80% as proposed by the opposition. Furthermore, the unions would be forced to gain the consent of the workers factory by factory by trying to interpret the great changes that are affecting the world of work. There is no longer the old Fordist worker who sells his workforce. Today, as the beautiful book by Aldo Bottini and Alberto Orioli "The work of work" for the editions of the 24 Hours explains very well, people are looking for other things: they want to have an adequate life span, they want training in the company, they want an indication of their career potential. And then it is not true that they have no contractual weight. Already today, and even more in a few years considering the demographic trend, there will be a rush by companies to grab the best workers and companies will certainly be more willing to pay them to keep them in their factories.
For all these reasons, our country urgently needs a profound change in industrial relations to stimulate productivity and therefore raise workers' wagesespecially in the variable part. The minimum wage, therefore, must not be a system to freeze the current situations of inefficiency, but on the contrary it should be the lock through which the union organizations of both workers and employers can be renewed.
Rethink the minimum wage bill
It would be necessary to completely rethink the current formulation of the bill, not only in the fixed amount of 9 euros which is totally unrealistic, but in the way of writing the text which aims at the bureaucratisation of the trade unions, probably suffering, as GP Galli says, from a violation of the constitution as regards freedom of association.
Waiting for Calenda to slip away from this one trap used by Pd e 5 Stars just to do a bit of political propaganda, disinterested in the facts of the real problem of workers and how to concretely try to increase their wages? What does a liberal party gain by standing alongside people who want to bring industrial relations back to the past century, effectively causing yet another block in our hopes for growth?
