With the signing of the agreement between the social partners on productivity at Palazzo Chigi, what the European authorities had asked for, as an emergency, at the beginning of August last year, was completed, namely a significant intervention on the rules of the labor market and on the increase in the competitiveness of the production system.
As is known, in order to comply with the requests of the famous letter from the ECB, the Berlusconi government, in the context of the so-called "August manoeuvre", with art. 8 identified in the corporate and territorial bargaining, even in derogation from national bargaining and a series of legal precepts (not only for flexibility in entry and exit, but also for example in matters of working hours), the appropriate instrumentation to recover productivity and competitiveness.
The now rampant hostility in the country towards the Berlusconi government was also instrumentally endorsed by the then president of Confindustria, Emma Marcegaglia, who, with an unhistorical regurgitation of the concerted method, decided to politically cancel the government provision, agreeing the following September with the CGIL of Susanna Camusso, and with Cisl and Uil in tow, that the matters of industrial relations and collective bargaining were entrusted to the independent determination of the parties and undertaking to apply only what has been agreed with the CGIL, CISL and UIL also at all levels of the territorial structures.
The Monti Government, after the pension reform that burned everyone in the nick of time, in tackling the labor market reform, despite the prevailing situation of dramatic urgency, initially sought, albeit serving longer periods, the more painless and politically more practicable agreement between the social partners.
The exhausting negotiation on entry and exit flexibility carried out by Minister Fornero with the unions, and with some questionable statements by the new president of Confindustria, has also highlighted, should it still be necessary to have confirmation, all the weakness and danger of the concerted method, as this method presupposes the consent of all the interested subjects, and to have it one must agree to travel with the speed of the slowest convoy and most resistant to change, i.e. the CGIL, up to recognizing it, as has been the case for a long time, the right veto.
So much so that the Government, to get out of the impasse in which it risked stranding the reform of the labor market, has introduced in the relationship with the social partners the "verbalisation" method: we dialogue with everyone, the various positions are recorded and then whoever has the burden of the decision, i.e. the Government, decides.
If with the Fornero law, the Government finally took charge of intervening autonomously on a matter that has unleashed the widest and most unjustified demagogic controversies for opposite reasons, both from the left with the alleged introduction of the freedom of dismissal following the modification of the 'art. 18 of the Statute, both from the right with the proclaimed increase in youth unemployment due to the constraints imposed on flexible contracts, on the subject of the recovery of the country's competitiveness and productivity, the Prime Minister himself has placed, with strong pressure, a responsibility of the social partners the obligation to provide, they too, a contribution to overcoming the serious economic crisis underway.
Lagreement on productivity reached at Palazzo Chigi between all business associations and trade unions, with the exception of the CGIL (which thus confirms its substantial hostility to the current government), leads to the strengthening of company bargaining with a clear delegation not only on the regularization of employment relationships and on the methods of carrying out work, on work and on the organization of work, but also on the possibility of intercepting a share deriving from the increases in national contracts to be allocated to the company salary linked to increases in productivity and profitability.
It is therefore desirable that the decentralization of collective bargaining at company level, whose legal source is given precisely by the derogatory legislation of art. 8 of decree law 138/2011, trying to align our industrial relations system with those of the major European countries, starting with Germany, now allows companies with their own company union representatives, generally more pragmatic and close to the workers' needs than to the old positions of some trade unions, to identify the most appropriate contractual solutions to increase company productivity and competitiveness through better use of production factors and work organization in order to safeguard employment, consolidate existing activities and increase investments to be ready to hook the recovery to the end of the "tunnel".
