The general strike of 11 April led to a tailspin of controversy between Maurizio Landini and Luigi Sbarra. The secretary of the CGIL - with reference to the tragedy of the Enel hydroelectric power plant on Lake Suviana - wanted to underline that the CISL did not invite the workers to abstain from work despite the fact that other deaths at work had been added, only a few hours earlier, to the long list of crosses. The facts turned out differently. First of all, the strike of 11 April had been proclaimed by the CGIL and the UIL as the starting point for the spring agitation campaign for a series of reasons including safety at work. The accident at the power plant had therefore been co-opted to provide additional motivation to strike. The CISL had not joined that initiative which had brought it back into the sphere of ''compulsive strikes'', which for some time have transformed the use of the most significant form of abstention from work into a ritual, reminiscent of historic trade union battles. The CISL, however, had not been deaf and immobile regarding the need to give an immediate protest response to the latest massacre, in which the number of victims was equal to that of the Thyssenkrupp of Turin: an event that aroused great emotion and outrage among public opinion. In fact, the Confederation of via Po had proclaimed a strike at Enel and in the province of Bologna to give a targeted signal of protest, in the best trade union tradition, to a specific event that did not deserve to be smuggled into the fuss of a determined strike on the drawing board a few weeks before. Moreover, the disaster at the Esselunga construction site in Florence also received a united response. It is increasingly clear, however, that resorting to abstention from work constitutes an admission of impotence. Strikes are resorted to because it is the way to save one's conscience and justify oneself for not being able to resolve the problem of safety at work which - beyond the human aspects - constitutes a fundamental obligation of the employer in the context of the employment relationship. Even governments and Parliament - faced with the repetition of increasingly recurrent tragedies - add new rules to the existing legislation (in itself very exhaustive) without asking themselves why - if the new provisions are considered useful - they were not adopted before . While the CGIL and the CISL were on strike (the only novelty was the day chosen for the abstention: a Thursday instead of the usual Friday) the conversion into law of a decree (n.19/2024) launched by the government at the same time was underway. after the massacre in Florence. These are the most important changes
1. The “INL Compliance List”.
This is the possibility, for the employer who is found to be in compliance with inspections relating to work and social legislation, including the protection of health and safety in the workplace, to be registered in a specific computerized list.o (publicly consultable on the INL website) in order to certify the lack of violations or irregularities. The effects deriving from this certification have a duration of 12 months from the date of registration and, during this period of time, virtuous employers will not be subjected to further checks by the INL.
2- The adequacy of the incidence of labor in construction contracts.
The burden of verifying the adequacy of the incidence of labor in public and private contracts for the execution of construction works is introduced. Different rules are envisaged for public and private contracts.
3 – Qualification system for businesses and self-employed workers through the "points licence".
The provision introduces a complex regulation through which the points-based license (based on 30 total credits) will be issued, in digital format, by the competent territorial headquarters of the National Labor Inspectorate. Unions complain that for now the license is limited to the construction sector.
4 – With the same aim of protecting workers, article 29 of Legislative Decree 276/2003 is amended, introducing the obligation for contractors and subcontractors to recognize the personnel employed an economic treatment no less than that provided for by collective agreementsi whose application is majority in the area and sector covered by the contract. This was foreseen in the initial text which was then modified by reference to the contracts stipulated by the comparatively more representative trade union organisations. We do not know whether the government, in making this change in an amendment, realized that the new definition also affects what is foreseen in the delegation (of which traces have been lost) on the fair wage, where the overall minimum treatment established in the most widely applied contracts it is practically extended erga omnes. The problem will arise of making the qualification and identification criteria of the contracts to be applied uniform.
5- The issue of contracts and subcontracts: is the main concern of Maurizio Landini, who attributes the main cause of accidents to the so-called cascade contracts (the copyright is his). The secretary of the CGIL is not so much interested in solving problems but rather in blaming the client/contractor's search for profit (which for him is the devil's dung) also for the non-compliances of the contracting companies. We let the economist respond to Landini, Carlo Alberto Carnevale Maffe who in an interview on Formiche states: "Procurements for infrastructure works, if made in accordance with the law, are not only a legitimate practice, but in certain cases indispensable to ensure organizational flexibility, presence in the relevant territory and access to skills specialists” (like those of the team that was intervening in the power plant at the time of the explosion in Suviana). For the economist, then, procurement “constitutes an important component of the market for small and medium-sized local businesses. Anyone who claims to immediately assume responsibility in the event of an accident, without waiting for a rigorous investigation, violates the principles of guaranteeism and causes unjustified damage to the national economic system". Then – we modestly add – freedom of enterprise cannot be placed under protection. In the Vulgate of Landini there is the demand for a new type of company, within which there is, perhaps with only permanent employment relationships, all the staff who can be called upon to carry out their activities when the problem relating to those arises tasks. This preaching – usually unchallenged by his interlocutors in recurring interviews – brought to my memory a passage that struck me when reading the essay ''The new geography of work'' by Enrico Moretti, where the production process of the iPhone was described. The only phase of production carried out in the United States was that of planning, design, software and hardware development. Apple, however, earned $321 on each iPhone sold, 65% of the total. The electronic components (634) were produced in Singapore and Taiwan, while the assembly (highly labour-intensive) took place in mainland China in a completely self-sufficient factory with 400 thousand employees on the outskirts of Shenzhen (''more than a factory - Moretti wrote – it looks like a city''). Could this be the new venture Landini is thinking of?
