The European Commission is conducting a survey on the Single Work Dowry (Dul) of the Lombardy Region, an active employment policy aimed at providing employment services through a network of public and private operators. Financed by the European Social Fund (ESF), the services provided are reimbursed only if they lead to effective job placement of unemployed people. The results confirm the effectiveness of Dul: since 2013, over 180 people have been sent to work, recording an employment rate of those who have used it 40% higher than those who have used other channels.
The European Commission has questioned our model with arguments based on the alleged risk of double funding. That is, that private operators take the reimbursement foreseen by the Dul for the placement and are paid for the same service by the companies they hire. Suspicion is concentrated above all on temporary employment agencies but is also prefigured for job placement with any form of contract, even with a permanent contract. The Commission therefore appears to be orienting itself towards a ban on paying for services based on employment outcome.
The position of the Commission, if it were confirmed in all its rigidity, would in my opinion have two possible outcomes, both disastrous:
- Closure of Dul and passage of employment policies, at least as regards job placement services, exclusively to the PES, with results that experience allows us to easily imagine, but with probable satisfaction of Minister Di Maio, of the president of Anpal Domenico Parisi and the "navigators", so far inactive.
- Prohibition for private individuals to use Dul to pay for work placement services, which would become the exclusive responsibility of the PES. Individuals would still be able to use Dul for training, with a view to better employability. But apart from the fact that it would be necessary to structurally change the entire Dul model, which had been agreed with the Social Partners and had its raison d'être precisely in the close combination of training and employment, the Operators would inevitably be left free to carry out training generic, being no longer able to finalize it at an occupational outlet that will be up to others to identify. And yes, this would seem to me to be an improper use of European funds and a gift to anyone who does a training without any confirmation of its usefulness.
A reasonable solution (if the Commission were to come back down to earth and take into account that cheating and scams can always occur, as they know very well in Brussels, however excellent the system they want to scam may be) could be allow the APLs, without prejudice to the current Dul legislation, to use administration as a paid employment outlet (perhaps by decreasing the share of rewards in this case), accepting the fact that an administration contract is more guaranteed and protected than a normal fixed-term contract, therefore with a benefit for the worker and a better result for the Regional Policies service for the Work and consequently a greater recognition for the operator. Then that some Operator gets paid (obviously off the books) by the company that hires a worker through Dul is a criminal matter (illegal labor brokerage) and not a matter of rules.
The fact remains that if the Region and the Social Partners are not adequately supported by the Government, Brussels is looming the risk that the first and most significant experience of public policies for work, capable of mobilizing both public and private resources with concrete results, must close; a bad signal in the general context of the desire for "more state" that hangs over the country.
