The proposal of the new secretary of the PD Enrico Letta, in favor of employee participation in company results during his report, he reopens an ancient frontier of work and industrial relations, many times stated, but never really addressed in our country.
I don't think so, referring to the debate opened by Ernesto Auci on the pages of FirstOnline, it is a question of thinking about the proposal of the newly elected Secretary of the Democratic Party, within a traditional left-wing or centrist political horizon.
What matters is to be - and it is by no means obvious - at least aware of the modernity of this perspective. The challenge of worker participation returns to the fore because it is increasingly determined by the contents of the change that work is experiencing and that the pandemic has accelerated.
It is therefore not a theme of the past that returns, but a piece of the future that questions us and that our country has to face, as has already happened in Europe.
The fact that, at the moment, even if only formally, the participation of workers in the Board of Directors enters the ex-Fiat as a theme, with the birth, in alliance with the PSA group, of the global automotive group Stellantis must make us think in perspective .
Having said that, we are not at year zero, the increasingly personalized and decentralized industrial relations have been able to deal with two important aspects of participation: the organizational one which is becoming increasingly popular in a structured way (the same recent renewal of the metalworkers' contract provides for a large and detailed chapter) and company agreements. Of the latter, there are 16 in Italy and they deal with matters such as performance bonuses, in which parts of the workers' annual salary are correlated to the achievement of objectives, including those of an economic and financial nature.
It is therefore time to give a definitive citizenship to strategic and economic participation. The cultural fabric of the real economy of our country, centered on a family capitalismhas always constituted an obstacle to this perspective, it is not enough to be satisfied with recent cases such as that of Campari or Essilor to say that we are here.
We have to structure a concretely feasible path of participation starting, for example, from the introduction of the presence of workers' representatives in strategic decision-making committees, starting with the main public companies (Enel, Eni, Ferrovie, Leonardo, etc.). Then, at the same time, develop a support law which: on the one hand makes the provision of shares to employees and on the other hand, in areas and issues such as investments, relocations, reorganisations, it provides for prior consultation and sharing with workers, and that this is organized in companies, encouraging bargaining to strengthen this space. It's too much? I don't think so, the future of work, that of quality, is increasingly played out within one social and environmental sustainability which sees in participation its lever of social and economic stability.
It is necessary to distinguish, as already happens in the most advanced working realities, that they are workers and their representatives to participate, the trade union instead has the task of negotiating. This is an issue that should also be clarified within the union itself.
In this sense, one support legislation strategic participation has nothing to do with a law on representation. The CGIL put your soul in peace.
