The introduction also in Italy of the guaranteed minimum wage it would be half a revolution, not just a social one, for avoid the exploitation of so many workers by entrepreneurs with few scruples, but also a real change in industrial relations which, if well conceived, could give a real boost to the recovery of business productivity, and thus to an increase in our country's anemic growth rate.
Instead, as usual, the Minister of Labour Di Maio relaunches the theme in a botched way, without fully understanding all the implications, but using it only as a polemical weapon against the Democratic Party, and with propaganda intent according to the imminent vote for the renewal of the European Parliament.
So far the minimum wage guaranteed by law it was not done due to the opposition of the trade unions, and in particular of the CGIL, which focused on national agreements to fix minimum wages and in fact jurisprudence has always given force erga omnes to these contracts, thus extending its validity also to those who are not members of trade unions. Now the position of the large workers' confederations seems to have softened as the recent evolution of the labor market has created a significant number of workers not covered by collective agreements, and moreover there has been an increase in employers' and workers' associations that stipulate contracts without there being a reliable certification of their representation.
It therefore follows that the minimum wage cannot be limited only to those who are not covered by a national contract and above all that must be accompanied by a law on representation in order to finally be able to clarify which subjects are authorized to stipulate collective agreements.
The consequences of these changes could be profound and very positive. Indeed the trade unions they could renew their way of operating by concentrating their activity in the company contracts or territorial ones negotiating everything that may be above the legal minimum, and making exchanges with employers on the basis of a salary linked to productivity increases. Considerable spaces would open up for dealing in correct terms the wage question, i.e. the low growth of wages in recent years, while the entire economic system, services included, would benefit from the necessary productivity increases who have been missing for at least twenty years. The Government could then facilitate this transformation of industrial relations with tax incentives (which exist in part) linked to productivity.
But to make possible the start of these innovations it is necessary in the first place correctly fix the amount of the minimum wage, without leaps forward that look so much like the old slogan of "wage as an independent variable", and at the same time to avoid encouraging a further leap towards undeclared work, already so widespread in our country.
Some time ago Paul Rebaudengo, former FIAT industrial relations manager, had put forward the proposal to take as a reference, the maximum amount of the redundancy fund of 1100 euros, which divided by the 170 monthly working hours by about 6 euros per hour.
Giuliano Cazzola, which in general is less in favor of the introduction of the minimum wage, suggests taking as a reference the 780 euros that the same citizen's income law fixed as a limit below which the beneficiary of the subsidy can refuse the job offered to him. And so the minimum hourly wage would be even lower.
A minimum wage law can be thought of as one proper continuation of the labor market reform policy launched with the Jobs act, where it was also foreseen, and not as a measure of opposition to that fundamental reform, as stated in many TV programs full of people who do not know what they are talking about.
The matter is therefore complex and the devil is in the details. Approach it superficially, as indeed is the custom of this government, can lead to results opposite to those desired: not greater equity and an increase in job opportunities, but to a new crisis in industrial productivity and an increase in undeclared work.
