In the rhetorical impetus with which Renzi reacted to the angry and almost desperate attack against the labor market reform project by heterogeneous sectors of the Democratic Party, he called into question the "old guard", introducing into the debate a generational concept that exists , but it is not the generative element of a cultural clash that could mark the Bad Godesberg of the Italian left. Renzi forgets that in the old guard there are also those who for years have fought for a renewal of the ruling class and above all for a project of regeneration and modernization of the country and for this reason they have supported and still support his project, even if with a critical spirit . The real discriminating factor is not age, but awareness of the need for radical reforms and the cultural re-foundation of the left. Proof of this is the incomprehensible arrogance with which the CGIL and the rearguard of the Democratic Party (not to mention SEL) defend the article 18 redoubt.
Article 18 is said to have symbolic value, but what does it really symbolize? For the management team of the CGIL and Fiom and for the variegated left of the Democratic Party, it is the architrave of a system of rights and protections which codifies the power relations between capital and labour. The battlefield in which the structure of these relationships is played out is the enterprise for which, postulating that the internal power relations are always to the advantage of capital, it is necessary to transfer the conflict to the sectoral and national level and try to obtain homogeneous wage and work organization standards, independent of company strategies.
This model of industrial relations rests on three pillars: national collective agreements, the welfare state and consultation with the national government and local institutions. The workers' statute and article 18 are part of a policy of regulation of the management power of the company by the owners of the capital (the "masters") and their emissaries (executives and managers).
In this scheme of union relations, the business system is arbitrarily considered uniform, not taking any account of the different needs of organization, governance, competitiveness and therefore management of labor relations. The process of globalization has gradually unhinged the economic and social structure on which the already obsolete architecture of this model rests.
A profound structural employment crisis followed which can only be overcome with economic growth which has its natural epicenter in the enterprise. For companies to get financed and invest again, three fundamental factors are needed: co-management of the production process and governance; a system of industrial relations and welfare that guarantees the worker continuity of employment, through a personalized path of training and enhancement of human capital and permanent relocation into the labor market; the minimum income; the continuity of protections, welfare and social security services and the quality of life. In this context, it is inevitable that the company and the territory become the center of bargaining, which is already happening, possibly assigning a support function to national collective agreements and, if anything, rethinking the role of interconfederal agreements.
If this is what Renzi is proposing, maintaining article 18, as the diehards would like, is incompatible with the logic of the jobs act and would end up hindering the processes of innovation and reorganization of companies and therefore the productivity and investments that they are the objective of fiscal and financial policies to stimulate growth and employment. Without these structural premises it would be difficult to implement a substantial tax reduction of the labor cost of companies and incentives for investments to revive growth.
Whoever raises the flag of article 18 defends, in reality, values linked to a social and economic system surpassed by history and power relations which, born to fight arbitrators and inequalities in the name of universal principles, have ended up identifying themselves with corporate interests . Yes, this battle could initiate a Bad Godesberg of the Italian left: perhaps the rearguards of the PD and the unions are, with anguish, realizing.
