The pension negotiations could be at a turning point. The Executive is willing to soften its requests on several points. However, during the verification of the political table, on Monday afternoon at Palazzo Chigi, there was no lack of resistance from the CGIL which decided to reconvene everyone for a final table round on Saturday 18 November. On the table, in fact, there is a package of 300 million which will make it possible to exempt 15 categories of workers from the increase in the old age retirement age to 67 from 2019. There is also a commitment to broaden these categories, when the president of Istat Alleva, in 2018, will have reevaluated the hope of life for each profession.
The heart of the discussion is about the 15 categories of workers which in 2019 will be exempt from the increase in the retirement age to 67 years (a five-month burden triggered by the adjustment of the age requirement to Istat life expectancy).
As anticipated last week, workers who have carried out one of the jobs considered "burdensome", i.e. the 11 that (under certain conditions) give access to the social Ape plus four others. Here is the complete list:
– nursing and midwifery professions;
– kindergarten teachers;
– caregivers porters;
– people involved in the movement of goods;
– ecological operators;
– waste collectors and separators, unqualified personnel assigned to cleaning services;
– workers in the mining, construction and building maintenance industries;
– operators of cranes and mobile construction drilling machinery;
– truck and heavy vehicle drivers;
– train conductors and traveling staff;
– leather and fur tanners;
– maritime workers;
– fishermen;
– agricultural workers;
– steel workers.
Merely belonging to one of the 15 categories, however, is not enough to be excluded from the 67 increase in the retirement age to 2019. two more requirements and it is precisely on these that the Government seems willing to intervene, lightening the initial requests.
The two new requirements are as follows:
1) to have paid 30 years of contributions (a substantial discount compared to the 36 initially envisaged);
2) to have carried out the heavy occupation for at least seven years in the last 10 (previously there was talk of at least six years out of the last seven).
Not only that: the Government has also confirmed that a technical-scientific committee will be set up with the task of reformulate the retirement age adjustment mechanism. Changes which, however, will only be able to enter into force starting with the 2021 increase.
The package of measures proposed by the Government to the trade unions should be completed with the extension of the experimentation of the Ape social to 2019.
What is certain is that time is running out now. This week the Senate Budget Commission will begin work on the 4 amendments to the Budget Law: the last train to take if a new pension package is to be included in the maneuver in the form of modification proposals presented by the Government.
On the afternoon of November 13, the face-to-face meeting between the prime minister, Paolo Gentiloni, and the general secretaries of the CGIL, CISL and UIL took place. Also present were the Minister of Economy, Pier Carlo Padoan, and the owner of Labour, Giuliano Poletti.
The Premier has brought an "innovative proposal on pensions compared to the starting point" divided into 7 points with a total cost of 300 million euros. In addition to blocking the increase for heavy work, the creation of a commission is envisaged to study the hardness of occupations and to evaluate the classification between social security and assistance for the purpose of better separation; the revision of the mechanism for calculating life expectancy based on the average and not on the peak differences; support for the supplementary pension scheme of public workers; improvement of the wage integration fund; reuse of Ape social resources in 2018; reuse of resources of the early ones for 2018.
The road to agreement, it must be said, remains uphill. Not only because the government's proposals may not be enough for the unions (the CGIL, in particular, speaks of a "negative opinion" and "insufficient openings"), but also because the margins for intervention are narrow. The new measures cannot have a significant impact on public finances, otherwise there would be the risk of irritating Brussels, which will publish its final judgment on the 22 budget law on 2018 November.
(Last update: 14.30 pm on 14 November).
