The gratifying successes achieved during a trip to Asia probably reassured Prime Minister Mario Monti a little, who had left Italy in the midst of the most heated controversies over the reform of the labor market. The declaration the other day in which Monti threatened to leave the Government if the country, represented by the political and trade union forces, did not feel ready to face profound reforms, betrayed a disappointment not only for the opposition itself, but above all for the arguments with which these were motivated, and even more for the attempt to exploit the position of the Government, qualifying it as a servant of the bankers, of the markets, or worse, of the interests of big capital. Certainly Monti must have felt offended in particular by the position of many commentators, starting with Eugenio Scalfari, who withdrew the old theory of "opposing extremisms" putting Camusso's position on the same level, contrary to any retouching of art. 18 and that of the Government which instead insists on a change in their opinion only for abstract ideological reasons which have nothing to do with the productivity and development potential of the country.
Also reassured by the polls that continue to give his person an approval rating of more than 55%, albeit with a drop of a few points, Monti patiently explained that the excessive rigidity of the rules when leaving the workplace has so far held back the will of companies to hire, and this has alienated both Italian and foreign investments. Certainly this is not the only element that has held back the country's growth, but it is one of the most important, and in any case this does not justify the typically Italian game in the face of every measure which consists in saying that "quite different" are the problems to be resolve and that what is being talked about at that moment is not the most important. This is what happened with liberalisations, and it is happening now with the labor market. And in any case, albeit in a more conciliatory tone, Monti has not renounced to point out that the parties enjoy much less trust than that which the Italians continue to assign to the Government.
Of course, as a good professor, Monti must have suffered particularly from being hastily labeled a man of the right, and even more from the distorted and sometimes fraudulent way in which he was presented by the Fornero reform. A study by UBS, whose researchers enjoy a well-deserved reputation for independence and competence, clarifies that the current system, which also has a high degree of flexibility, is however the result of an average between an excess of incoming flexibility and a lack of output flexibility, determines a disincentive for companies to hire and invest in the qualification of the workforce. At the same time it implies a scarce commitment for those who are employed on permanent contracts to improve their professional training because they feel very secure in any case, thus not giving an adequate contribution to the growth of productivity. The government reform, according to the UBS study, rebalances incoming flexibility with outgoing flexibility, bringing our system closer to that of the more dynamic countries of Northern Europe and thus laying the foundations for raising our growth rate. Trivially saying that the government wants to increase unemployment when the reform tends to the opposite is a distortion due either to ignorance or to the existence of ideological blinders, or a mix of the two.
Just as it makes no sense to attribute to Monti the will to weaken the trade unions by favoring the exclusion of those who most contest company management. This is a nonchalant polemical and demagogic argument, given that discriminatory dismissals are null in any case. Nor can workers' fears be stirred up by flaunting the risk that companies would make many more layoffs than today. Entrepreneurs who find it so hard to find qualified and reliable collaborators do not fire lightly, also because with Fornero's new system, layoffs are still quite expensive.
The underlying objective of the amendment of Article 18 should be to consider reinstatement as the exception and not as it is now, the basic rule applied by the courts in 99% of cases. Surely there is a problem of how to write such an understanding from a juridical point of view. And this, given the tangled intrigue of the rules of our labor law, is certainly not easy. But the obstacle cannot be circumvented with a solution like the German one which, considering Italy's cultural and institutional diversities, would be like wanting to change the form without changing anything in substance.
The reform of the labor market does not affect any worker's right, also because already today more than half of workers and all young people do not enjoy the protections of the few who have a permanent job. Least of all does it affect the Constitution which proclaims Italy a republic founded on work, but not on the irremovability of privileged people who have a permanent job. The truth is that the current highly unbalanced structure helps to curb investment and therefore hinders growth by reducing the availability of labor and the amount of wages. In short, it is one of the important causes of the stagnation and indeed of the retreat of our country in the last twenty years.
The reform elaborated by Fornero and Monti represents the indispensable minimum to promote a change. Other than opposite extremisms. In this case we are faced with one who is wrong and another who is right!
