With the basic income, i.e. with an undifferentiated universal subsidy, the Five Stars thought they could tackle and solve three very different problems: that of combating absolute poverty, that of income support for temporarily unemployed workers and that, much more important, of the employment or re-employment of young people and unemployed workers. So obviously it wasn't, nor could it be.
To really combat absolute poverty, the subsidy is not enough. We need effective measures to combat the social exclusion and environmental degradation that fuel poverty. Subsidy plus social assistance: this is the formula that the associations operating in this field had suggested to the Gentiloni government and which had found its first concrete form in the income for insertion. But the Five Stars, who understand nothing about absolute poverty, have preferred to replace it with the citizen's income, that is, with a subsidy that does not oblige the provider to also take care of the assistance. The result is that, to verify the correct use of the subsidy, it is no longer the social workers but the Guardia di Finanza. A regression which it would be good to remedy by restoring, if not in name, at least in substance, the insertion income.
Even in the income support of temporarily unemployed workers, the citizen's income has proved to be a superfluous tool. The causes of temporary unemployment are many and very different from each other and require ad hoc contrast measures. For example, temporary unemployment due to a drop in demand contrasts with the ordinary redundancy fund; that resulting from the restructuring of the company, with the extraordinary redundancy fund; while, that due to crisis or cessation of activity, it is faced with the redundancy fund for crises. Over the years, the latter has been joined by the redundancy fund by way of derogation, which does not require any particular reason other than that adopted from time to time by the government to prolong the protection of the income of workers of companies otherwise destined to close, such as Alitalia , Whirlpool and Ilva.
Fixed-term workers, project workers and seasonal workers also have income protection instruments for periods of unemployment. If anything, they could be implemented by allocating more funds to them e making them accessible to all precarious workers and not only to those in some sectors. In general, as mentioned above, in none of these cases the citizen's income proved to be useful or necessary. It could very well have been avoided.
The only field in which it should have proved useful and necessary is that of youth employment and the re-employment of unemployed workers, but it is precisely in this field that its failure was most sensational and, in some ways, inexcusable. The reason for this failure is that first the yellow-green government and then the yellow-red one, have not been able or unwilling to face the real problem that arises, which is that of a radical reform of the labor market. Touch-ups are no longer enough. AND you don't even need diversions, such as basic income or navigators. What is needed is a paradigm shift, a real Copernican revolution. The Italian labor market is not equipped to handle the epochal transformation that has affected the world of work. He just can't do it. It is a market based on assumptions that no longer exist: a permanent and possibly life-long job, one-off training through apprenticeships, public placement management, extremely complicated contracts that are increasingly distant from corporate reality, etc…
To move from these presuppositions, so deeply rooted in the mentality of one part of the country, to the idea that a permanent and lifelong job can no longer be the rule but will be the exception, that training can no longer be a one-off but must be continues and that flexibility and mobility, far from endangering work, will increasingly be the condition for guaranteeing it, is not easy. But it is absolutely necessary to do it, and to do it now, not only because we are already seriously behind schedule, but also because now, with the Draghi government and the recovery plan, an extremely favorable political and economic space has been created for it. Moreover, that of the labor market is not a reform that requires who knows what further investigations. It has been discussed for years and the guidelines are quite clear. First of all, we must invest – and a lot! – in continuing education, providing the country with a dense network of highly qualified training centers (as was done at the time with the ITTS) and the same amount must be invested in the creation of a dense network of employment centres, truly worthy of the name.
This means that employment centers must not be clones of the old employment offices but of the agencies that are located outside the Public Administration and equipped with highly professional and qualified personnel. Employment centers must be able to act in agreement with private agencies, must be able to recruit the personnel they need on the market and must provide services for which they must be remunerated. Facilitating the meeting between job demand and supply and between the needs of companies and professional training is anything but simple. For this it will take time and for this we should also be able to count on the contribution of private agencies which have this experience and which therefore should be encouraged and not opposed.
From what transpires it would seem that, albeit amidst ambiguity and uncertainty, this is the direction in which the government intends to move. If so, it would be good for the country.
