Curiously, but not entirely, the last days of the election campaign for the abrogation referendums of Sunday 8 June and Monday 9 did not focus on the merits of the issues at stake and on the questions underlying the popular consultation but on the positioning of the voters, with particular emphasis on the option of abstention. Curious, it was said, but not entirely because the real issue at stake is not so much the repeal or not of this or that rule submitted to referendum but the achievement of the quorum of 50% plus one of the voters participating in the vote, without which the consultation would have no value. With rare exceptions, such as those on divorce or abortion, nuclear power or public water, the referendums of the last fifty years have almost never reached the quorum, partly because of the complexity of the questions and partly because the quorum is high and therefore difficult to hit. This is why, even before the merit of the referendum, the fate of the consultation is played on participation or abstention from voting. A crucial question especially in the most political of the referendums of 8 and 9 June, that on Jobs Act, that is, on a part of the complex rules on unjustified dismissals and workers' protections introduced in 2016 by Renzi government to modernise the labour market and then partly modified by both Constitutional Court that from a new decree of the Conte government 1.
With the Jobs Act, employment has grown and precariousness has decreased: Istat data says so
Like the right of Giorgia Meloni and Matteo Salvini, la CGIL by Maurizio Landini he has always seen the Jobs Act (a term inherited from the labor policies of American President Barack) as a thorn in his side. Obama and then copied in France by President Emmanuel Macron) and fiercely fought it even though it had been launched by a government led by Pd. For the promoters of the referendum, the Jobs Act is synonymous with precariousness and layoffs. But Istat data tell a different story and certify that the regulated flexibility of the labor market introduced by the Jobs Act has not only not destroyed jobs in Italy but has since then contributed to increasing theoccupation of 1 million and 100 thousand units. But theIstat he also says the job insecurity not only has it not grown with the Jobs Act but has decreased, as demonstrated by the increase in permanent contracts. Thirdly, in Italy the rate of dismissals is the lowest in the last twenty years. These three considerations, based on objective data, would be enough to show that the referendum on the Jobs Act is a bogus referendum, but there is another reason, no less fundamental, that makes it completely incongruous and mystifying. In fact, if the Yes vote wins in the referendum on dismissals, the Jobs Act would not be abolished at all, which in reality no longer exists due to the changes made over the years, but only one implementing decree out of 8 with the nice result not of returning to the mythical article 18 on the obligation to reinstate in the face of unjustified dismissals but of returning to the Monti-Fornero law of 2012 which worsens worker protections by lowering compensation for workers from 36 to 24 months. This is why the referendum on the Jobs Act – unlike the one on citizenship – is fallacious.
The referendum on the Jobs Act looks to the past but today the emergency is that of wages
But the referendum on the Jobs Act is also retro. Why retro? Because in ten years the labor market has changed in Italy too and because today's emergency is not that of layoffs but the exact opposite, that is, the difficulty for companies, both in industry and in services, to find staff. Our political class and the union leadership will open their eyes sooner or later to the exodus of talent and theexpatriation of young people more qualified, which already today in Italy makes the amount of emigration higher than that of immigration? Not to mention the other emergency, also denounced by the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, which is the wage emergency with wages – which certainly depend on low productivity and low economic growth – which are not only inadequate but lower than the European average for the weakest groups in the world of work but also for the most qualified workers. That the inadequacy of Italian wages is of little interest to the political class is serious, but that the unions are more concerned with referendums than with a great battle for the improvement of wages is not only serious, but it is unforgivable.
Here, then, is why, faced with a bogus and retrospective referendum like the one on the Jobs Act, abstaining is the exact opposite of disinterest and apathy but is a civil and reasoned form of dissent and rejection of incongruous questions of a consultation that does not even remotely address the central problems of the world of work and of a country like Italy that does not need to look at reality in the rearview mirror but to face head-on the great epochal challenges that lie ahead.
