On New Year's Eve, in Rome, eighty-three out of a hundred traffic policemen "marked a visit" or found other ways to take time off work. Considering the traffic and turnout conditions on the streets of the center (and beyond) that characterize the longest night of the year, it was not only a matter of a conspicuous phenomenon of absenteeism, but a serious act of collective irresponsibility that nothing can justify.
Events of this kind recall the strike of air traffic controllers fired by Ronald Reagan in the XNUMXs. And they highlight – like Mafia Capitale – the attrition of the social fabric of a city in which the sense of the duty. Investigations are announced on the matter, sanctions are promised, even if the case - we can imagine it - will be resolved in another lost opportunity. Because society has no way of defending itself from the arrogance of organized powers.
The abuse of the medical certificate occurred, in Rome, in the midst of a debate on the dismissal of public employees, connected to the opportunity (or not) of the application, against them, of the legislative decree which will give effect to the contract at increasing protections for new hires, with annexed protection against illegitimate termination, according to what is indicated in the Poletti Jobs Act 2.0. The writer has expressed the opinion that that text - in the current draft of the preliminary draft prepared by the Government on Christmas Eve - cannot be extended, sic et simpliciter, to public employment.
In the first place, because it is the text that excludes it when, in article 1, it delimits the field of application, making reference to blue-collar workers, white-collar workers and managers (professional figures typically belonging to the world of private work) and ignoring managers (who in the public administration they enjoy specific protection against unjustified dismissal, while private ones do not have it). in the public administration, where, for many reasons, individual withdrawal cannot exist for objective reasons.
The case of disciplinary dismissal is different. It is true that a specific casuistry is envisaged (collected in Legislative Decree No. 165 of 2001, amended by the Brunetta reform of 2009) which includes - among the disciplinary reasons - also the dismissal for "insufficient performance". But it is the change in the type of sanctions that deserves to be implemented in the public sector as well. Indeed, under current law, if the judge considers the withdrawal unjustified, he condemns the administration to reinstate it. By applying instead the new regulations envisaged by the Jobs act for new employees in the PA in the case of disciplinary dismissal, the normal sanction would become compensatory in nature, except in cases (still subject to reinstatement) in which the non-existence of the material fact was proven.
The harmonization of protections on this point would require - in terms of legislative technique - the adoption of coordination rules; but the leap in quality would be considerable and important. If this is the case, it does not seem essential to solve the problem in the context of the Madia bill: since it is also a proxy, it would be necessary to defer everything to the next delegated decree. Instead, it would be enough that, in the final version of the legislative decree, the provisions of the second paragraph of article 3 (containing the subject of disciplinary dismissal) were also extended to public employees. Regardless of how this will be addressed (and resolved?) problem, the question remains predominant: will the Government measures serve to give new breath to the occupation? One would say not, considering the forecasts of Istat according to which the modest reversal of the trend in growth will not lead to an improvement in the unemployment rates.
It is made to think, then, that not even the incentives provided for by the stability law (already complaining of an uncertain departure in view of the non-alignment with the entry into force of the newly minted contract) will serve to compensate - on the side of new hires - the inevitable redde rationem, on the labor market scenario, with the hundreds of thousands of workers coming from the maze of social safety nets, when companies, precisely to have the possibility of restarting, will find themselves in the need to settle accounts with the possible redundancies. This is why there will be strong pressure to invoke the assistance of the pension system, supporting the push to undo the constraints of the Fornero reform, rather than making the most of the new potential - albeit modest - identified in the field of active policies.
Up until now, the Renzi government has not listened to the rigmarole of the exodates (a topic that was ignored, fortunately, also in the greeting from Giorgio Napolitano, unlike what happened in other circumstances). But in the stability law some first crumbling of the plant built by the Monti government, especially as regards the retirement age. A final consideration concerns labor policies: woe to downsize the reform of the "acausal" fixed-term contract. We are ready to bet that companies will continue to favor this tool, even if it is more onerous and without incentives. But for three years the employers do not run the risk of being sued.
