It is the first time that the expression “active labor policies enters the constitutional text. It had already appeared in some legislative provisions (Monti-Fornero reform and Jobs Act). Now it takes on even more importance. Will this change of skills be able to solve any of the problems affecting active employment policies in Italy?
The role they play in combating structural unemployment and in facilitating the matching of labor supply and demand is of fundamental importance. Just as fundamental is the function of activating the beneficiaries of income support interventions in the search for work, whether they are the unemployed with unemployment benefits or the disabled or the poor who are, albeit partially, able to work.
All European countries have set up a National Agency, with a dual task: disburse subsidies and encourage beneficiaries to look for work, assisting them in their search.
Even in Italy, with the Jobs Act, a National Agency for active policies was set up, but the local network of offices that perform the fundamental functions of intervention in the labor market, i.e. the Employment Centres, are still managed by the Regions (until recently the function was delegated to the Provinces), as required by the Constitution in force.
This model worked and works very badly. The management of passive policies (subsidies) is at national level, as entrusted to INPS, while the management of active policies is entrusted to the Regions.
In this scheme, the Regions have no incentive to make active policies work well to reduce subsidies, because they are not the ones who pay them. Despite the repeated legislative interventions aimed at establishing strong coordination between the Regions and INPS, the Regions have never shown a sufficient commitment to carry out the function of activating the unemployed beneficiaries of subsidies to work. The opportunity to integrate passive policies and assets has never been exploited. It is no coincidence that in the other countries a single structure has been created at national level (and articulated on the territory) to manage both unemployment benefits and employment services.
France did it twenty years ago; in Germany it has existed for a century. And also in Great Britain the management functions are unified within the Ministry of Labour. In these same countries, the investment in a single efficient structure has led to significant savings in spending on social safety nets.
In Italy, as we know, a lot is spent on passive policies and little on active policies. In general, in our country we prefer to invest in money transfers and little in services. The new Constitution, in entrusting legislative competence exclusively to the State, lays the foundations for an important restructuring of our labor policies.
Among other things, this is a necessary restructuring if we want to participate, on a par with our Community partners, in that "European unemployment benefit" project, of which, incidentally, we are the main supporters.
