That riders need more and better protection is certainly true. It is positive that the new Minister of Labor (as a former steward: which is not a demerit) takes care of it (but he would do well to convene the trade unions as well). But from here to affirming, with the tone of solemn declarations, that these people (the vast majority of whom are students or double-workers, who carry out the duties of "food delivery men" during the periods in which they are free from their priority commitments) are the expression of ''a generation forgotten by the state'', seems to us an exaggeration.
In Italy we bear the scourge of youth unemployment - it is true - but there are still 15 million employees, while five million employed are under 35 years old. Isn't it, always and in any case, what they call "good employment"? We are aware of it. But it does not seem a correct representation of reality to assign the role of "new general class" to a niche of the labor market (it is a percentage that cannot be identified even with the metaphor of telephone area codes, due to the number of zeros that would occur after the first and the comma).
The writer is not surprised by these forcings. There was a time when a series of syllogisms was touted: the working class is the metalworkers; the metalworkers are Fiat; Fiat is the Mirafiori assembly line. That the ''magnificent and progressive fortunes'' of millions of workers depended on the outcome of the clash in the advanced trenches of Taylorism was also an exaggeration dictated by ideology: but at least tens of thousands of workers were involved on whom depended the final stage of car assembly (at the time the standard at Fiat was 2.500 cars a day).
Then the myth of the blue overalls faded: the cococos became prototypes of exploitation, then hired workers, call center employees, voucher recipients up to the riders of today (not to mention the so-called exodus on the pension side). Minorities, niches, if you will, subjected to greater attention from literature and cinema than from that of trade unions.
Yet a large part of recent labor legislation has set out in pursuit of these figures within the various solutions devised by companies - always looking for a flexible use (the only possible one) of this workforce - when they were denied the forms previously adopted contracts.
The most informed trade unionists (in truth, few of them are known, so much so that we could say with the great Dante "righteous son duo but they are not understood") realize that, in such cases, it would be wrong to classify the profiles of the jobs created by the gig economy.
“The big problem is the crushing that we live in Italy – he commented in a recent interview Marco Bentivogli, leader of the Fim-Cisl – the so-called two-tone highway: either self-employed workers, or employees. E-workers are neither: classifying them as employees would destroy the companies that employ them, classifying them as self-employed would deprive them of any protection. We need to think about new protections, but the union must change its attitude: the great collective bargaining - Bentivogli argued - must not transfigure itself to intercept these workers but rather must change the characteristics of the bargaining to approach the issue in a specific way and think of some real protections".
On the contrary, the decree on which Minister Di Maio is working (however contacts and insights are underway which have led to its temporary shelving) would end up proclaiming, ope legis, even those who, according to current legislation, the jurisprudence consolidated (reaffirmed by a recent sentence of the court of Turin) and the best doctrine, are not.
It is better to pay attention to what Bentivogli said, namely that the classification as employees (with related institutes) would not be sustainable for companies. Even before a problem of costs and remuneration for services, framing riders as subordinate workers to whom a legal minimum wage is applied (proposed by Tito Boeri and in the same decree) would involve a radical change in the organization of work.
The company that today entrusts the free choice of the worker whether or not to carry out a service that is proposed to him (for the execution of which he is paid on a piece-rate basis), should instead prepare - making use of his managerial power - the work plan that the rider would be required to follow in the unit of time for which he receives the agreed fee. Unless some "beautiful soul" thinks that the rider is paid for the hours he makes available, remaining free to accept or not the delivery of which he is warned.
With the reversal of the employment relationship, the problem of establishing a minimum number of services within the unit of time would arise, but, in addition, it would be up to the algorithm to saturate the working hours with an adequate number of deliveries. All this in the impossibility of planning requests for meals at home. In short: a big mess. Even in labor law "natura non facit saltus".
Subordinate work is neither invented nor enforced by law. Never forget the call center experience: pro bono pacis the companies accepted a bizarre criterion, proposed at the time by the willing minister Cesare Damiano, to assign the rank of employee to a part of the staff. Today the call centers have either closed or have gone in search of a new homeland, less complicated than ours.
In his interview Marco Bentivogli recalled the considerations made in this regard by the labor lawyer Michele Faioli which we report in conclusion. "We already have the regulatory tools to do it, we work on existing legislation," said Faioli. And that is on Renzi's Jobs Act, which however the new government would like to disassemble piece by piece like a jigsaw puzzle. "In the Jobs Act, article 81 of Legislative Decree 2 extends the protection of subordinate work to self-employment as well", continued Faioli. «This rule was born with the idea of giving more protection to workers such as riders. If the existing rules were well applied, we would already have concrete answers». The rule - continued the labor lawyer - "in paragraph 2 then puts the possibility of making specific agreements in the hands of the unions". But if so, where would the disintermediation end up?
