If Italy is the country of the G20 where real wages have undergone the strongest loss of purchasing power from 2008 to today (with a loss of 8.7 percent) the question to be asked is not because, but as we have asked us so. In the meantime, while we pour tears on our coupons (for those who have it) in the same period – always according to the report of the international work organization (Oil) – in France there was an increase of about 5 percent, in Germany of almost 15. They go up, we go down.
We are talking about real wages, therefore of wages purified by inflation. And inflation is defined as “tax of the poor” because it is linear and biting above all those who have a low income: waiters, dishwashers, carers, housekeepers, babysitters, laborers, logistics and porterage workers, orders and cashier of supermarkets, security guards, vigilantes and off going down. They are the first to hear the grip of prices that rise like bread (which in the meantime costs double). Often with very long times and precarious contracts that expire before fresh milk, such as those of administration managed by the employment agencies – in our province in very strong reduction, the first to jump as caps.
But of course there are other causes, starting with low productivity, poor investments in research and development or in the training and redevelopment of employees. Although the Oil report informs us that being productivity in the G20 countries that grew more than wages, there would be the potential to resume step.
To aggravate things there is the fact that Italian exports in the world has always kept wages in the world, instead of increasing productivity, as for example has always done Germany (even if the Germans lately if they pass it, we think of the manufacturing industry of the automotive). In Italy, low wages have in short have been consciously kept low to encourage exports. Instead of focusing on quality, we reduced everything, even the claims. Who let this situation rot? A little everyone. Starting with entrepreneurs and trade unions, given that national contracts (which once made the ministerial tables tremble) and the corporate ones have not even been able to keep wages in line with price increases. We passed from the 1970s’ escalator to reduced gauge bargaining, unable to protect employees, not even the most precarious ones. The model of national bargaining itself appears inadequate, because it does not even take into account the surge in energy prices, sometimes demanding it to second -level bargaining, which however is often inadequate or is completely lacking.
This situation would offer for an increase in wages by law, but as we know the unions come to the traverse since they want wage increases to be a matter of the social partners. With the results we are witnessing: still salaries, orbit bills, families in apnea. To complete the picture are the strong inequalities between workers, for example between Italians and foreigners, or between men and women or even between young and old. For example, employees not only work less hours (often resorting to part-time, because the state does not put them in a position to be able to look after their children adequately), but are also less paid for the same hours than male employees. And they are often forced to choose between work and family, between diapers and badges. A “trade off”, a choice that should not exist, as the head of state Sergio Mattarella recently said. Yet it exists, and how it exists.
The final picture is that of a company Italia to be redone, with a negative salary dynamic, certainly unequal, archive and little advanced. An Italy company that has stopped believing in work as a tool of emancipation, often and reluctant to transform it into a survival exercise. But there is still time to remedy it
