Minimum hourly wage, too many millenarian expectations that will be disappointed

The theme of the minimum hourly wage it would apparently have all the requisites to also become a legal measure to determine the minimum hourly wage paid for any job throughout the country. This seems to be the case in all countries where it is in force and where, it must be said clearly, it often replaces or supports weak bargaining. 

Where the contractual coverage of employees is high, as in Italy, the legal minimum represents, at least in theory, the guarantee threshold for the weakest band of the world of work at risk of marginalization and exploitation. 

Minimum wage: what do the current contracts stipulate?

Our current contractual situation sees hourly minimums set at slightly higher levels above 7 euros with the most notable exception of agricultural workers (5,14 euros per hour) and domestic workers (4,62 euros per hour). This would already be a problem if it were a question of determining a minimum hourly value that is the same for all workers in our country, regardless of whether they live in Milan or in Calabria. 

After all, speaking of minimum wage hours differentiated for the territory would be equivalent to reopening an endless debate on the return to "wage cages" abolished about fifty years ago. If we want to apply the model in place in the 21 countries with a legal minimum wage, we either adopt the absolute minimum value in place (4,62 euros per hour) which would objectively have a very marginal utility, or we adopt a higher conventional value ( it could be for example that of seven euros) however creating an enormous contradiction in two fundamental sectors such as agriculture and housework for which the cost of the legal work would increase by about 50% and that in the immediate term could only be solved by resorting to a differentiated treatment for these compartments.  

There is a third way on the minimum wage

There is a third hypothesis, in which these difficulties could be stemmed without contradicting the objective indicated by the EU, i.e. taking as a reference all minimum contractual hours, thus giving surreptitious application to article 39 of the Constitution which entered into force on 1 January 1948 which, as is known, is not yet operative, at least for the well-known article 39, and many doubt that it will be in the future.

But this is the crucial point. The question is complicated by the fact that our contractual structure is based on the traditional national collective agreement for the sector, of corporate origin, but also on replacement company contracts of the national ones, among which the best known is the one signed with Stellantis, the former Fiat. Does anyone think that using only the traditional national contract for metalworkers as a reference will lead to the ope legis extension of the latter to Stellantis as well? 

The attempt to circumvent article 39, or to be clearer to "normalize" the freedom of bargaining affirmed unequivocally in article 39, through the vague reference to the comparatively more representative confederal trade unions, cannot avoid the theme of a clear procedure for legitimizing all contracts. It is therefore necessary to ascertain the representativeness of each stipulating organization, both from the trade union and from the entrepreneurial side, but above all to recognize the right to vote of all interested parties through rigorous procedures as a source of necessary legitimacy. And this must apply to all contracts also because the diversification of economic activities also induced by impetuous technological development has made obsolete the old corporate system inherited from the fascist regime. 

This does not exclude a political decision to determine a minimum hourly wage by legislative means, on the basis of a comparison with the social partners, but it is in the interest of the union, if it intends to exercise the role of wage authority with the entrepreneurs, do not bring the minimum too close to the average values, since this would mean self-reducing its bargaining power. 

The Italian wage question

However, working hard to cut the trunk of the tree on which you are sitting is a widespread masochistic practice. Having said that, we must also be clear that the statutory minimum hourly wage has little to do with the Italian wage question. 

To be trivial, it would be enough to underline that the number of hours worked is also fundamental. The phenomenon of our low wages must be tackled with determination but also with a correct examination of reality. There reduction of the tax wedge for example, aligning ourselves with the percentage values ​​of Germany, which roughly could "return" about 8% of the cost of labour, would cost the state budget 12-14 billion a year. Since it is public expenditure, it would be necessary to indicate precisely how to finance it.                                                                                                                                             

A new budget variance or the identification of adequate tax levies? The messianic expectation of the effects of the fight against tax evasion or an effective effort to identify truly effective measures to hit the unfaithful taxpayers who lurk everywhere? Or adopt accordingly the German pension model which guarantees a gross pension as a percentage of salary equal to 45% against 75% in Italy? Or still a spending review which is the opposite of the "bonus" policy widely adopted in recent years?                 

In any case, the union would do well to relaunch the bargaining, claiming the renewal of national contracts, in which one cannot reasonably ask to recover imported inflation, but above all by relaunching, through a campaign of mobilization starting from the executive groups and delegates within the workplace, company bargaining in a logic of trade-off between wages and productivity o efficiency of the service which, as such, is free from inflationary risks and which has all the more reason to be accompanied by tax incentives. And why not, when the limits of an unregulated globalization appear evident, also negotiate the return of activities that were once delocalised?                                  

There are no easy solutions to difficult problems but above all it is necessary to be aware that the system in which we live is made up of communicating vessels and every action needs to be evaluated first of all for the consequences it produces.