Carlo Cottarelli's halt was really necessary for the big newspapers to realize that the dismantling of the Monti-Fornero law on pensions was underway and to mobilize their best columnists to send, in our opinion too polite, ''a notice to sailors''?
Yet the signals had been there, for a long time and numerous. In the first days of July, the Chamber, with a broader favorable vote than that of a majority addicted to drugs due to the prize assigned by the electoral law, had approved the sixth (yes, exactly the sixth) intervention to safeguard exodus workers (those subjects who retain the right to retire with the requirements prior to the 2011 reform).
Once again, history followed the usual script on which we have seen more or less all the parties play during the previous safeguard operations. As usual, we started with a text of the law multipartisan on the basis of what has already been prepared in the previous legislature. And with each topical passage (the fifth safeguard was included in the stability law for 2014) the implacable Labor Commission of the Chamber took a step forward to amend - under the pretext of exodus workers - the Fornero reform, waiting for the conditions to mature (financial even before political - these would already exist -) to reach a ''final solution'' of that ''accursed law''.
The text approved by the Commission, in its entirety, was struck down, in the technical report, by the State Accounting Office and by INPS. The cumulative cost (2014-2025) of the project was estimated at 47 billion (starting from 2,8 billion in the current year which would rise to a peak of 8,8 billion in 2018). Too much to support, even for the last cornerstone of the Pd's ''class line''. Thus, it was necessary to ''make a virtue of necessity'' and settle for it. As in previous times. But this time it was a luxury. It was discovered (proof of the fact that the exodus were less than those who were smuggled when the case was in fashion) that in the second and fourth safeguarding operations the estimate of possible users had been exaggerated and therefore also in the coverage of expenses; and that there were therefore savings available. Then a few hundred million were added taken (sic!) from the Employment Fund.
In the sixth safeguard, then, 32 workers were included, but, given the simultaneous reductions made on the previous interventions, the net number of those protected will increase by about 8, reaching the total of 170. The new protective measure is very simple: it limits itself to extending from 36 to 48 months (and therefore to 6 January 2016) from the entry into force of the Fornero law, the accrual period of the previous pension requirements. This condition will allow interested parties to retire with the old and not with the new requirements. We try to explain this passage well, which, in our opinion, is scandalous. Anyone who terminated their employment relationship before the reform came into force will be able to retire with the pre-existing requirements as long as they accrue within four years.
What to say ? Let's sketch. Instead, we just can't justify the fact that a completely new "category" of protected persons has boarded the Raft of the Medusa of the Italian pension system: the so-called terminated from a fixed-term contract between 2007 and 2011. In the maximum number of 4, it is sufficient that they have not re-employed indefinitely to re-enter the system of safeguards up to 48 months (at this point one year more has also started for them than what was envisaged by the text approved by the Commission). These individuals may not have lost even a single day of work, entering into temporary relationships one after the other or collaboration contracts that are also interesting from an economic point of view.
But all this doesn't count: if you don't work indefinitely, you are still ''children of a lesser god'', who must intervene to compensate you at the time of retirement. It's Pantalone who pays anyway. The cuccagna, however, is not over. Here is another vector to use: the decree n.90 (already in the Chamber in the Chamber) on behalf of Marianna Madia, the minister who, ''spreading her soft braids over her panting chest'', took it into her head to reform the civil service under the banner of more marked youthfulness and on the basis of a very old/young relay hasty in the criteria: ''go ahead and I'll come in your place''.
In the provision for the conversion of decree n.90 (Madia), the Constitutional Affairs Commission, in the referring office and at the suggestion of influential members of the Labor Commission, inserted an amendment in favor of teachers (about 4 thousand) which reached 96. This amendment (approved despite the contrary opinion of the State General Accounting Office) it consists of a substantial seventh improper safeguard, since these workers will be able to retire with the rules prior to the 2011 reform even if they are not redundant, but permanently employed. Another amendment abolished, until 2017, the economic penalty for public employeeswho choose early treatment, before the age of 62, making use only of the expected contribution requirement.
This is a first step towards restoring old age retirement, even in the private sector. The Commission then made the text even more discriminatory towards pensioners who are precluded from any possibility of holding positions in the public administration in clear violation of the provisions of art. 51 of the Constitution and introduced a provision which allows executives, doctors, university professors and magistrates to be ''scrapped'', obliging them, at the discretion of the administrations to which they belong, to pay in advance and denying them the right to reach the limits of old age retirement.
But even more threatening clouds are gathering over the Monti-Fornero law, kept at bay for now by the amount of resources that would be needed to bring about even more substantial changes (we have already understood, however, that this government is not very attentive to budget balances ). Let's not forget that Forza Italia has joined the collection of signatures for a referendum to repeal the Fornero law, promoted by the Northern League. It is a ramshackle and propaganda initiative, destined, unless the donkeys learn to fly, to break when the Council declares the question inadmissible. But, in the meantime, the debate on the repeal will poison the waters of civil life and will smoothly pull the sprint to the ''politically correct'' initiatives lying in the Chamber, bearing proposals for so-called flexible retirement: which is an elegant way to lower the retirement age, perhaps with the pretext of protecting not only the exodus, but also the redundant. In other words, to restore, under certain conditions, the possibility of retiring before the age of 60 or in the years immediately following, as usually happened in the times preceding the Monti-Fornero law: one of the most important initiatives of the government of the technicians which was a worthy team, now exhibited in the three-ball stand at the country fairs of a nation of ungrateful people.
