The triangulation between the government, trade unions and social partners on the productivity table has not - for now - been successful.
Mario Monti hoped for a last minute agreement, to be shown in Brussels together with the approval of the anti-corruption bill in the Senate.
After long and excited negotiations, the final rush did not produce results, but controversy did: Susanna Camusso accused the Government of hindering the concertation process between the unions and the business world, following a separate meeting at the Ministry of Development between the duo Passera-Fornero and employers' associations. The harsh criticism of Camusso it did not go unnoticed, so much so that the superminister of Via Veneto promptly branded the comments of the CGIL secretary, who criticized the failure to invite the trade union representatives, as "meaningless".
This morning, however, the President Abi Giuseppe Mussari he declared himself "optimistic about the possibility of reaching an agreement for productivity". An optimism also shared by Giorgio Squinzi, despite the fact that the failure to reach an agreement in good time is due precisely to the rift that has arisen between the consolidated Confindustria-Cgil axis on the one hand, and the world of small business and finance on the other.
Just theAbi (Italian Banking Association) and theAnia, which represents insurance companies at a national level, opposed an agreement that – according to some rumors – CGIL and Confindustria would have reached and presented to the executive, an agreement however judged insufficient also by Corrado Passera and Elsa Fornero. The Minister of Labour, in particular, has repeatedly recalled that a necessary condition for granting funding (equal to 1,6 billion between 2013 and 2014) for productivity wages is the achievement of a serious and quantifiable agreement with certainty.
But the agreement reached between Giorgio Squinzi and Susanna Camusso does not satisfy these requirements, since it limits itself to implementing the agreement of the 28 June 2011 (regarding representation), an agreement that Passera considers insufficient since "it speaks of tools available and not of concretely measurable commitments in favor of productivity".
The Government demands that funds be spent as efficiently as possible, and is ready to divert them towards the consolidation of public finances if the social partners are unable to carry out, responsibly, a negotiation of systemic scope in the interest of the country. The endorsement that Abi and Ania have guaranteed to the executive is not accidental: both banks and insurance companies are facing - for various reasons - labor cost problems.
Credit institutions must severely reduce staff and close 3000 branches, making accounts with the trade unions of the category. Insurance companies are faced with the substantial abolition of the sole agents – included in the Stability Law – but they also fear the entry into force of a bill (under discussion in the Chamber), which would introduce the obligation to guarantee the presence of agencies throughout the national territory, with imaginable consequences on labor costs.
The central point of the story is (in addition to the issue of demotion and hourly flexibility) how much of the wage increases to move from the national basic contract to the company one, linking it to productivity objectives.
While Confindustria and the trade unions would like to keep the contractual structure intact (based on the double component, the fixed one and the one linked to company agreements), the Government and the world of small businesses, coupled in an unprecedented agreement with banks and insurance companies, are pressing to split the most it is possible to regulate economic treatment from the regulatory side, leaving the latter to the prerogative of collective agreements and shifting the economic part to decentralized negotiations, to reduce a competitiveness spread of 20 points which costs the production system, according to Passera, no less than 60 billions a year.
