For once I agree with Tito Boeri: an eighth safeguard for the so-called exodus would become part of the list of unfair, extemporaneous and scarcely effective solutions. In the report with which he presented the XV Annual Report of INPS (for 2015), the president of the Institute in via Ciro il Grande was very explicit.
"If the sequence of safeguard interventions were to continue - underlined Boeri - the progressive change of objective of these measures would emerge with ever greater clarity: not an exemption specifically addressed to workers who find themselves in economic difficulty in the years between the cessation of activity and the receipt of the first pension due to the changes introduced by law no. 214 of 2011 (exodus in the strict sense), but a surrogate for passive labor policies or other welfare institutions today undersized or absent to protect wider audiences and not necessarily, or not all, directly damaged by the reform".
It is the same judgment which, at the time, was given on the subject byParliamentary Budget Office (Upb). We know, however, that in Parliament (especially in the Chamber) the "fraternity of patron saints" of expatriates is sharpening their weapons in favor of a new safeguard aimed at 25 individuals, according to them worthy of protection and hitherto excluded, with the aim of "definitively closing the problem". All in all, the safeguards were aimed at seven macro-categories of workers: 1) in mobility, 2) paid by Solidarity Funds, 3) authorized to pay voluntary contributions, 4) on exemption from public employment, 5) on leave/permission to assist children/family members with serious disabilities, 6) terminated from work on the basis of agreements, 7) left from work by unilateral choice.
The operational definition of the aforementioned seven macro-categories has changed over time in an expansive sense, bearing witness to the difficulty of circumscribing the phenomenon and bringing it to a close. Analyzing the evolution of the safeguarded categories, as is punctually recalled in the Report, it can be seen that the most significant expansions have been:
– moving forward the date by which the requirements for starting the pension must be completed within the pre-reform Fornero rules: from December 6, 2013 of the first safeguard to January 6, 2017 of the seventh;
– the inclusion of workers receiving layoff earnings as at 21 November 2014, with an employment relationship that terminates by 30 December 2016 due to redundancy;
– the forward movement of the date of termination of work: from 4 December 2011 of the first safeguard to 31 December 2014 of the seventh (although referring not to all terminated but to a specific subgroup);
– the enlargement of cases of relevant terminations: initially only that determined by agreements between the parties, then also that by unilateral deed, then also the termination tout court (as natural exhaustion of the contract) even if referring only to fixed-term contracts;
- L 'easing of the constraint on the non-resumption of other work activities after termination: first absolute, then referring to all permanent contracts and to contracts of other nature for an amount exceeding a salary ceiling, then referring only to permanent contracts allowing any other type of contract without salary ceilings;
- L 'widening of the mobility cases: first only the ordinary, then also the one in derogation, finally also the special construction treatment;
– the prediction of a interruption not exceeding twelve monthsi for subjects in mobility between the end of the intervention of the social shock absorber and the achievement of the requirements for the right to pension;
– the provision for subjects authorized to voluntarily continue to obtain protection even if they have not paid no voluntary contribution, but that this contribution was also only creditable.
In essence, the Report reiterates: “The sequence of expansions led to the start of a process of extensive protection of the expectations of those who have undergone or voluntarily opted for changes in the working sphere even many years before the law n. 214 of 2011 and who awaited the start of the pension with the old rules even in times long after the reform".
Despite these enlargements the number of safeguarded persons, when fully operational, has not increased: those planned remain more or less 172 thousand, while the cost of extending the protection to new cases was covered, in part, by savings made in the previous safeguards, proving that the need had been overestimated during the campaigns pro-exodus media outlets. So let's see below the state of the art in June of this year, as summarized in the Report.
Categories and number of safeguarded subjects who are granted access to pension according to the previous rules
Ordinary mobility or in derogation: 43.655
Long mobility: 3.218
Beneficiaries of Solidarity Funds: 19.063
Voluntary continuation of the contribution: 30.742
Voluntary continuation in mobility or after mobility: 124
Public exempt from service: 1.256
Leave to care for children with disabilities: 201
Leave/leave for serious reasons: 8.390
Retired from work on the basis of agreements or by unilateral deed: 17.489
Fixed-term workers: 3.494
Total applications accepted: 127.632
Pensions paid 101.837
(June 2016. Source-Inps)
As emerges, then, from the following table, the XV Report also provides, with regard to the safeguarded, the data relating to the number of pension recipients divided on the basis of their brackets of amount (in gross monthly euros).
It is easy to note, on the basis of their amount, that in most cases they are early retirement pensions and that many of the beneficiaries were, in service, white-collar workers, technicians and middle managers. According to the canons of rampant populism, many of these treatments (for whose owners warm tears and loud protests have been shed) would be counted among the accursed "golden pensions".
