"If the provisions on personal income tax deductions, in favor of subordinate and para-subordinate workers, and on the increase in the taxation of financial income can lead one to think that Matteo Renzi has finally done "something" of the left, the judgment should be tempered by immediate interventions on the market of labour, which remedy some of the distortions of the Fornero Law on the reform of the labor market itself.
The "acausal" fixed-term contract (released from specific reasons) and the simplification of the bureaucratic procedures of the apprenticeship, in addition to the enlargement of the age range, are in fact in the Labor Law line of Maurizio Sacconi, current President of the Senate Labor Commission and former Labor Minister of the Berlusconi government rather than in the strings of the "historic" left and trade unionism.
The Fornero Law, which had the pompous goal of shaping "an inclusive and dynamic labor market, capable of contributing to the creation of employment, in quantity and quality" has remained a declaration of principle, not followed by concrete results. Fornero, with the complicity of the CGIL, was based on the assumption that in order to create stable employment, it was necessary to tighten the entry flexibility of employment contracts, shifting the center of gravity of hiring to permanent contracts, incautiously defined as "dominant", to reduce, if not eliminate, the "precariousness", the result of the so-called "bad" flexibility.
In essence, an attempt had been made to overcome the duality between workers "guaranteed" by permanent contracts and flexible workers by reducing the feasibility of companies to resort to temporary contracts in the face of market needs, rather than attacking the totem of the work protected by art. 18 of the Workers' Statute.
In this way, the conviction that in Italy it is extremely onerous to hire people has continued to persist among financial analysts and foreign investors, since the marriage between employer and employee is for life and divorce is not foreseen: a thought well known by who has working relationships with international business managers!
Furthermore, it is not a labor law, but the law of the markets that creates stable jobs: the labor law must create the pre-conditions for not losing opportunities when they arise. The data published by IlSole24Ore on the employment relationships activated by type of contract in the last quarter of 2013 prove it: permanent contracts fell by over 9 percentage points and apprenticeship contracts by over 7 points, while they increased by one percentage point for fixed-term contracts and about 5 points for other types (temporary, intermittent, insertion contracts, etc.).
Having now extended the "acausal" term contract to 36 months, from the previous 12, and the interruption period between one contract and another to 10 days, can give greater guarantees in the correlation between needs and personnel to those companies that in their industrial plans envisage possible increases in employment lasting at least three years.
If the company development plans, always based on the assumption of economic growth, are then implemented and consolidated, it will be of all interest for the companies, at the end of the three years, to guarantee the economic return of the training investment made with the workers hired, stabilizing them with the transformation of their permanent contracts.
Otherwise, if the temporary needs do not turn into a definitive structure, the companies will not be forced to ballast themselves with a workforce exceeding the market needs. Furthermore, being able to count on the possibility of resorting to fixed-term contracts, the legitimacy of which is independent of the observance of the strict constraints established by the traditional legislation, centered on the reasons, makes the companies, while in the necessary respect of the production needs and financial compatibility, more willing to invest in employment, given the certainty of costs without the possibility of distorting interventions by the judiciary.
The discourse to be made for apprenticeship is more complex, because this type of contract, despite being an important tool for the development and enhancement of the skills of young people entering the world of work, requires, despite the novelties of the government provision, in particular due to the procedural simplifications made, greater commitments and charges in the training phase which, in turn, presuppose, also with regard to other types of contracts, a more articulated and consolidated overall strategic planning of the company, a situation which is not so simple to be found in the current difficult economic situation.
On the other hand, the postponement to the medium-long term of the implementation, by means of an enabling law, of the jobs act raises some perplexities. The reference to the enabling law may mean, on the one hand, the foresight not to immediately clash with the unions on the reform of the social safety nets, with the risk of weakening their approval of the fiscal manoeuvre, and on the other hand, not having yet reached a " synthesis" in the government majority between those who advocate the need for greater liberalization of the labor market, as requested by the international community, and those who are anchored to a twentieth-century vision of an archetypal labor law based on the "real" protection of the workplace (Article 18 of the Workers' Statute), on the immutability of duties and irreducibility of remuneration (Article 2103 of the Civil Code) and on the prevalence of the national contract over the company one (Article 36 of the Constitution).
What is actually needed is a real simplification of what has accumulated and settled so far in an inextricable tangle of laws, laws, regulations, circulars that over time various Legislators, not always competent, as well as the many State Administrations have served up to us. We are therefore waiting for the promised jobs act which should include, among other things, a "labour code which encompasses and simplifies all the rules currently existing", knowing full well, however, to give the "good turn" to our labor law, that the existing rules must not be enclosed: they must simply be eliminated for the most part”.
