But does the spending review apply only to ministries and the public or also to state-owned companies? The doubt is legitimate if one reads in the latest issue of "Espresso" the results of an acute analysis of the costs and labor productivity of Rai employees conducted by Professor Riccardo Gallo, industrial economist at the "La Sapienza" University of Rome and one of the leading Italian budget experts. Gallo, who having been vice president of IRI in the past, knows Rai very closely, has already demonstrated in previous studies that "the net labor productivity in Rai is lower than that of Sky and less than half that of Mediaset". But this time, examining the costs and results of the public service, he arrives at more disruptive conclusions that will not fail to arouse discussion and raise the reaction of the internal trade unions.
According to Gallo, the average labor cost of a Rai employee is 93 thousand euros, i.e. "almost double that of medium-sized and large Italian companies" while revenues from season tickets are stagnant (.1.737 million euros in 2013), from advertising are slightly down but even halved compared to ten years ago and the imbalance between public service and license fee amounts to 346 million a year (equal to 2 billion and 300 million from 2005 to 2013).
We can discuss the usefulness of the public service offered by Rai as it is, but in any case - observes Gallo - "if we divide the 346 million imbalance in 2013 by 93 thousand (the average labor cost of an employee) we find the number of redundant employees to be fired to rebalance public services and subscription revenues. Well, the result is 3.733 employees, which equal exactly one third of the 11.458 made redundant”. Gallo's conclusion is peremptory but difficult to dispute from an economic point of view: "in rai, one employee out of three is objectively too many".
We will soon see if the president Anna Maria Tarantola, who comes from the Bank of Italy, and the general manager, Luigi Gubitosi, who comes from Fiat, being two people who know about company accounts, will have something to say. parties and trade unions will certainly have a lot to say that have literally occupied Rai to the detriment of the taxpayer but the numbers give them wrong
