A-Infos (en) Italy, FDCA, Cantiere #25 - "The class struggle is over" - Tommaso Santino (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

With this hope, the government and employers, assisted by the Compagnia 
delle Opere, an Italian entrepreneurial association of Catholic 
inspiration, directly linked to the Communion and Liberation* movement 
and by the CISL, are preparing for a further battle against the last 
guarantees left to the movement of women workers and workers ---- The 
meeting with the aforementioned title was held on Wednesday 20 March at 
9 pm in Milan, organized by "Tempi", the reference magazine of Comunione 
e Liberazione and Compagnia delle Opere (CdO), for the presentation and 
debate on the bill for the regulation and promotion of worker 
participation in the management of companies proposed by the CISL, with 
the participation of Lorenzo Malagola, deputy of Fratelli d'Italia, 
Andrea Dellabianca, national president of the CdO, Giorgio Vittadini, 
president of the Foundation for Subsidiarity, as well as the fundamental 
organizer of the summer event of the "Rimini Meeting", an annual event 
of Communion and Liberation.
We have already addressed and stigmatized in our pages the initiative of 
the CISL and the collection of signatures for the popular initiative 
bill entitled "Participation in Work" (1) which culminated in November 
last year with the deposit of almost 400 thousand in the Chamber 
signatures, a proposal later endorsed by the current government majority 
with a similar project signed by the group leaders of Fratelli d'Italia, 
Forza Italia and Noi Moderati.
This bill essentially presupposes the full application of Article 46 of 
the Constitution which formally establishes the right of workers to 
collaborate in the management of companies and the introduction of 
promotional and incentive mechanisms that convince companies to 
voluntarily bet on the comparison with employees and their collaboration 
for greater competitiveness of the company itself, offering them the 
opportunity to express themselves on strategic and management choices, 
to contribute to the improvement of products and processes and therefore 
also to share the economic results, providing for participation economic 
and financial by workers in companies.
An explicitly and openly inter-classist strategy, entirely internal and 
subordinate to the mercantile and liberal economic system, which led us 
to write: "as we can see, the retreat is substantial and is the result 
of that blindness of the analysis of society which persists in not 
recognize the inevitable contrast of interests between the classes: 
bosses and working masses".(2)
An alleged blindness which in reality is a desire for revenge if not 
actually revanchism of groups of economic and financial power, with all 
its collateral governmental, trade union, cultural and ideological 
apparatuses, towards a working class which periodically and above all 
stubbornly reaffirms the its class interests inevitably opposed to the 
employers and governments.
In the face of such an increasingly explicit attack on the demands for 
emancipation of the workers' movement, and the vastness of the 
ideological and cultural battle that the propertied classes constantly 
brandish against our class, in the presumed progressive camp we still 
stammer about "broad camps" with alternating events linked to the 
delusions of power and leadership of characters ranging from Renzi to 
Fratoianni, passing through Conte and Schlein and where the clarity and 
evidence of the ongoing class conflict is constantly obscured if not 
ideologically rejected, like the employer and government counterpart.
But what we want to take into consideration with these notes are some 
aspects, which are salient and significant for us, of the working 
condition, to which no alternative coalition or trade union 
organisation, including the CGIL, gives concrete answers.
The hypothesis of a new contract for mechanics for 2024/2027 which the 
category is discussing in recent days, although requesting a figure 
which on the surface may finally seem significant, being 280 euros the 
request for an increase in the three-year period, in reality comes after 
two contracts, that of 2016/2019 and the one renewed in 2020 which will 
expire in June of this year 2024 with scarce salary recoveries and which 
despite the safeguard clause, which provides for the adjustment of the 
amounts of the agreed increases, if the "IPCA net of imported energy" 
produced higher increases, they were not capable of recovering real 
inflation.
This mechanism has in fact determined relatively high increases in 2023 
and perhaps in June 2024, due to the surge in inflation in 2022, 
compared to completely inconsistent increases in previous years: 44.75 
euros in 4 years, between 2017 and 2020.
But not only. The revision of the new classification scale, implemented 
in the previous contract which abolished the levels by introducing the 
new areas and the so-called "soft skills", i.e. the personal skills for 
level passages, makes the passage of levels from air to level 
increasingly discretionary. air and therefore increases in salary levels 
are less certain, weakened considerably by the now trade union practice 
of penalizing and freezing seniority increases.
But the most problematic aspect represents the request for a reduction 
in hours which is once again lexically reconfirmed as a generic 
objective, but never indicating a precise temporality and above all not 
claiming an effective reduction in daily hours.
Any reduction in hours is in fact directly linked to the increase in 
productivity and competitiveness as well as to a generic and progressive 
request for experimentation which is associated with the classic use of 
funds previously allocated in social safety nets.
In the paragraph of the contractual hypothesis under the heading 
reduction of hours we read verbatim:
"The main objective is to guarantee employment by increasing 
productivity and competitiveness thanks to technological investments in 
products and processes, implementing forms of reduction in working hours 
for the same salary.
We ask for a reduction in working hours that implements what is already 
foreseen for shift work and which also applies in sectors/companies 
involved in transition, reorganization or crisis processes and 
significant professional retraining. We ask that a contractual testing 
phase be started with the aim of progressively achieving a reduction in 
working hours to 35 hours per week, without prejudice to existing 
company agreements.
At the end of the testing phase, the parties undertake to evaluate, 
modify, implement and extend the established hourly reduction in the 
metalworking and installation sectors and/or industries. The Parties 
undertake to involve the government to identify a suitable and effective 
legislative instrument that favors the contractual reduction of working 
hours also through the resources currently used in social safety nets, 
also to encourage support for training" (3)
Furthermore, it seems unlikely if not impossible to claim an effective 
reduction in working hours if effective control over overtime is not 
recovered, those that company managements can impose without any 
discussion with the RSUs themselves and which can reach up to 120 hours 
in total, guiltily accepted in the old contract of 2016, the one in 
which the current national secretary was at the helm of FIOM.
As well as the request to increase the monthly contribution paid by the 
company by 4 euros per employee, aimed at developing supplementary and 
mutualistic benefits provided by the Health Fund, and the increase in 
the amount from 200 to 250 euros per year for supplementary welfare, 
with the possible request for conversion of the Pdr (Performance Bonus) 
into further supplementary welfare, testify that the position and 
reflection on the attack on public health, formally opposed by the 
organization itself, in particular by the SPI CGIL pensioners union, 
undergoes a sort of dissociation schizophrenic when it is expressed in 
the individual production realities of the category.
It should now be clear to most people that all these sums negotiated and 
obtained for the various "benefits" as tax exempt sums, in addition to 
being profitable for the employers, in fact determine less income for 
public healthcare itself, restoring a mechanism similar to the old 
mutuals, those preceding the 1978 reform of the national health system, 
undermining its universality and inevitably leading the public health 
system to its privatisation.
Similar reasoning applies to the bill presented by the M5Stelle on the 
reduction of working time, presented on 15 March 2023 and arrived at the 
Labor Commission in the Chamber whose first signatory is the leader Conte.
Also in this proposal the indication is to reduce working hours on an 
"experimental basis" from 40 to 32 hours with equal pay, arriving at a 
4-day working week, on the example of experiments already carried out or 
in progress taking place in various European countries and in our own 
country.
Experiments in this sense have in fact been carried out in Spain, Great 
Britain and Belgium, and further experiments are taking place in France, 
Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway and Switzerland.
In the presentation of the proposed law it is recalled that currently 
"some company contracts, in Italy and elsewhere, are already providing 
for the possibility of dividing the work performance over just four days 
a week:"(4) indicating that the burden of employers who wishing to 
participate in this experiment "will be granted exemption from the 
payment of social security and insurance contributions payable to them, 
up to a maximum limit of 8,000 euros on an annual basis, without 
prejudice to the rate at which pension benefits are calculated".
The same exemption "is also granted, also cumulatively with other 
different benefits, to employers who make new hires related to the 
reduction of working hours".
In this regard, the proposed law, by establishing "a maximum spending 
limit of 250 million euros for each of the years 2024, 2025 and 2026", 
instructs the National Institute of Social Security to monitor the trend 
of spending, providing that ,"if it emerges, even prospectively, that 
the aforementioned limit has been reached, the Institute will not take 
further questions into consideration".(5)
The secretary of the Democratic Party, Elly Schlein, also agrees with 
this experimentation of reducing working hours with equal pay, stating: 
"We are making a very simple proposal: let's expand the New Skills Fund 
- co-financed by the European Social Fund - also introducing the 
experimentation of reducing working hours for the same salary. We are 
betting on the model of collective bargaining between companies and 
unions to encourage short weeks " "A fund that helps those who sign 
contracts for the reduction of working hours through a contribution 
exemption of 30 percent of social security contributions which expands 
to 40 for demanding and demanding work performance".(6)
As can also be seen in these further proposals, an effective reduction 
in daily working time with equal pay is not requested and declined, the 
only real objective to free workers from the exploitation of their life 
time and consequently obtain effective and greater job opportunities 
both for the new generations and for women.
In the production companies that in Italy are already experimenting with 
the 4-day working week such as the Intesa Sanpaolo Banking Institute, 
the daily working hours have not decreased at all, but in concrete terms 
we work an hour more on all four days, i.e. 9 hours instead than the 
7.30 daily scheduled.
Furthermore, employees who want to take advantage of the short week can 
"individually access these methods" but only if this is compatible "with 
the company's technical, organizational and production needs". And 
therefore, in fact, the worker must have every request for a short week 
approved by his manager, leaving the latter with great discretion.
To date, in fact, approximately 17 thousand workers have forwarded the 
request to work 4-day hours out of the approximately 100 thousand 
employees of the Intesa Sanpaolo group and there is still no certain 
data on how many actually work such hours. Just as in Luxottica, where 
the reductions in hours are also voluntary, but have led to a reduction 
in the days of vacation available throughout the year, exactly 5 days of 
paid leave, or in the Lamborghini industry, a unique and excellence with 
1900 workers.
All these economic and production realities are highly competitive in 
oligopolistic markets such as Intesa Sanpaolo or Luxottica, which is in 
fact the world's largest producer of frames for eyeglasses and 
sunglasses, or niche and high-end economic and production sectors of the 
automotive sector. " like Lamborghini, firmly controlled since 1988 by 
its subsidiary Audi, a company part of the Volkswagen Group.
Therefore, continue not to set up a generalized battle for the reduction 
of hours for equal pay, but link a future reduction of hours to a 
company experimentation that is mostly evanescent and not possible in 
the vast majority of production and industrial realities, in particular 
in myriad of small and medium-sized industrial companies, furthermore 
tying any discretionary reductions to further incentives and tax relief 
for the employers, means excessively fragmenting the overall solidarity 
fabric of the working class, already deeply worn out by the scarcity of 
job offers and the innumerable and various existing regulatory and wage 
conditions.
Better wage, regulatory and working hours conditions that can be 
obtained in individual cases or individual production realities, if not 
generalized, are inexorably destined to be reabsorbed according to the 
different vicissitudes of the capitalist market.

Note:
(1) the CONSTRUCTION SITE "Between a draft and the original, in the end 
you always choose the original" n°18 June 2023
(2) Idem
(3) hypothesis of a platform for the renewal of the national collective 
labor agreement for the metalworking and plant installation industry | 1 
July 2024/30 June 2027 | FIOM CGIL FIM CISL UIL UILM
(4) Parliamentary acts - 1 - Chamber of Deputies 19th legislature - 
bills and reports - documents Chamber of Deputies "legislative proposal 
initiated by deputies Conte, Carotenuto, Aiello, Barzotti, Tucci"
Experimental provisions concerning the reduction of working hours 
through agreements defined within collective bargaining. Submitted March 
15, 2023
(5) Idem
(6) Il Sole 24 Ore "Lavoro, Conte relaunches legislative proposal for 
short weeks. From 40 to 32 hours with the same salary" by Andrea 
Gagliardi 22 February 2024

* The Compagnia delle Opere (CDO) is an Italian entrepreneurial 
association of Catholic inspiration, directly linked to the Communion 
and Liberation movement. It is mainly present in Italy with 40 offices, 
supported by 16 abroad and associates around 36,000 businesses, mostly 
small and medium-sized companies, and around 1000 non-profit 
organisations, including charitable works and cultural bodies.

https://alternativalibertaria.fdca.it/
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