From the escalator to the Jobs Act: Maurizio Landini and the errors of an anti -antagonist union regardless “who fights against the government instead of work. A reference to the reformist legacy of Tarantelli
Also this year on May 1st it will be a day of contrast between the government and unions, or at least a part of them. As per tradition, the Meloni government has chosen to announce measures on the day of the workers’ festival. In 2023 a strong temporary decontribution was decided (later which became structural with the latest budget law) for income of up to 35 thousand euros. In 2024 a 100 euro bonus was introduced for the single -income families of employees employees plus other small interventions. For this year, Premier Giorgia Meloni has announced a new decree focused on safety at work. On the one hand there is a clear political strategy of the right government to be direct interpreter of the needs and problems of workers by bypassing the unions, on the other hand Fdi is the first party among the workers.
On the other hand, May 1st will be for the unions the beginning of the referendum campaign at work which will end with the vote of 8-9 June (although the union front is divided, with CGIL-UIL in favor of the abrogative questions and the CISL Contoria). For a strange game of history, the referendum against the Jobs Act falls exactly forty years from the referendum of 9-10 June 1985 against the cutting of the escalator which, even on that occasion, split the union unit (CGIL in favor of the referendum, Cisl-Uil contrio). What the left is likely to meet is another defeat, although from the less important political consequences after the historic blow of forty years ago in an attempt to unpack Bettino Craxi. This time Giorgia Meloni does not risk anything because the Jobs Act is a reform of the Democratic Party, the same party that now makes a referendum campaign for its repeal. The possible failure of the organizers will be the product of the disinterest of the voters (lack of the quorum) rather than a scorching defeat in the polls. If there is something that is still current for the union is the lesson of Ezio Tarantelli, the intellectual inspirer of the 1984 Valentine’s Day agreement on the cooling of the escalator against whom the Berlinguer PCI organized the referendum, and which was always forty years ago was killed at the hands of the red brigades for “the courage of the unpopulist proposals”, as stated in the title of a book (work) Emmanuele Massagli and Luca Tarantelli.
In Today’s world, where inflation has been tamed by the ECB and in which wages have not yet recovered the lost purchasing power, in some ways the problems are opposed to those of the 80s, when the escalator was the engine of the wages-pen spiral. Today the inflation has been tamed but, as the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella recalled in recent days, the “inadequate wages are a great question for Italy”. The largest for what concerns the world of work. The topicality of Tarantelli is therefore not in the technical choice of a mechanism that no longer defends the salary replicating the past inflation, but orienting it downwards (a sort of Forward Guidance, as was precisely the “predetermination” of the number of points of the escalator), but in a couple of basic principles on the role of the union that guided that reformist line.
A first idea of Tarantelli was that the unions were to equip themselves with very solid studies to be able to elaborate autonomous economic policies: the ambition of the Professor of Sapienza, who collaborated with the Nobel Prize Franco Modigliani prize, was to have high -level technical skills to build an econometric model that allowed the union to confront directly with the Bank of Italy, the Confindustria and the other centers where the economic policy was developed. Based on this profound conviction Tarantelli, with the support of the secretary of the Cisl Pierre Carniti, founded the ISEL (the Institute of Studies and Economics of Labor) associated with the Catholic union.
-Today it is evident that the unions are completely churned out of studies centers up to par, or at least they are completely ignored by their leaders who launch themselves into considerations and battles completely detached from reality. The Secretary general of the CGIL, Maurizio Landini, has spent the last few years to describe a labor market in a bad state: increased precariousness, reduction of the hours worked and denial of the increase in employment with nonsense phrases of the type “more employment no longer means more jobs”. It is on the basis of this analysis of the reality that CGIL has promoted the referendums against the Jobs Act to give a blow to the “precariousness”. A solid study center would have shown to the union that in recent years the labor market has been significantly strengthened from both a quantitative and qualitative point of view, explaining that the union effort should concern more bargaining and wages (as Mattarella’s laws recalled) that work on work such as the Jobs Act (described by S&P, which has just raised the rating of Italy, as one of the factors that have strengthened the labor market in the last ten in the last ten in the last ten years). Now the employed are abundantly above 24 million (record level) and in the last two years they have increased by one million units (about 2 million if we consider the lowest point during Covid). But above all the permanent employed were growing: now 16.5 million (historical record), with an increase of over half a million only in the last year; While term employees are down: 2.7 million (-112 thousand in the last year and about -300 thousand compared to 3 million pre-covids).
And so, in these four years in which employment increased by about 40 thousand units per month and a half million per year, CGIL and UIL have called four general strikes (one against dragons and three against Meloni): the largest consecutive strip of general strikes from the post -war period during the fastest expansion of the labor market of the last 30 years. As if that were not enough, to the general strikes, the CGIL added a referendum against a reform like the Jobs Act which made stable work significantly increase, or at least did not hinder it.
And this brings to the other fundamental idea of Tarantelli. In his vision, the construction of a solid study center was a necessary tool to allow the union to “be able to exchange with anyone in turn to the government”. The union was no longer supposed to be the “transmission belt” of the parties, but an autonomous and free entity to be able to make “exchange agreements” both with the employer counterpart and with the pro tempore government, whatever it is. TOThere was a situation of submission of the union, given that the CGIL of Luciano Lama was in a certain extent forced by Enrico Berlinguer’s PCI to make the referendum battle for the escalator. Now, in some ways, the situation has overturned since it was Landini’s CGIL that dragged Elly Schlein’s Democratic Party to participate in the referendum against the Jobs Act. But it is clear that Landini with the general strikes regardless, with the invitation to the “social revolt” and now with the referendums he has attributed to the union the role of leadership of the political opposition to the parties and the government. A vision opposite to that of Tarantelli: a free union, also from its political prejudices, which first elaborates a platform and then tries to make exchange agreements with those in the government to really improve the conditions of the workers.
