The Cgil has collected more than four million signatures to ask for the abrogative referendum on the Jobs Act of Renzi’s Democratic Party. The idea is to turn the clock back to Workers’ Statute and therefore to the obligation of reinstatement for dismissal without just cause. A first attempt at a referendum in 2017 was rejected by the Constitutional Court due to the complexity of the question. Now the jurists of the Cgil have drawn up a different and clearer text. Let’s see if this time we get to a popular pronouncement. With a certain irony, Renzi’s counter-reform was called a contract with increasing protections, when in fact eliminated the only real protectionthat is, reinstatement, replacing it with an indemnity. However, since it was applicable only to new hires, Renzi’s reform passed perhaps also because it was accompanied by the 80 euro tax bonus.
Now the remarkable fact is that the Democratic Party has changed its line. Not everything, but certainly his secretary who had run with a program that, among other things, included the repeal of the Renzi law, considered a macroscopicmistake. And so he did, signing the referendum questions. A rare case of political coherence. Different was the position of Bonaccinihis competitor for the secretariat, who wanted to address the problems of the world of work with the proposals of Prime Minister Meloni: discount on social security contributions and more training. It went as it went. Within the members of the Democratic Party Bonaccini’s conservative line wonperhaps due to the usual loyalty to the party, but the progressive front, decidedly broader, rewarded Schlein in an open competition.
The two souls of the Democratic Party still look askance at each other but the new secretary is right for now, revitalizing the electoral results of the Democratic Party that risked going towards 10%, anything but a majoritarian vocation. By signing against the Jobs Act, Schlein he severed all ties with the old conservative PD of Renzi. This is the political news. But at least, has the Renzi reform kept its promises by creating that million and more jobs, already boasted about and spent several times in the election campaign by the late Berlusconi? The Renzians are gloating and say yes, but the data are very different from their narration.
Let’s start from the international level. The labor market has been exceptionally strong for months in all industrialized countries where record numbers of people in employment have been reached. First and foremost in the United States, where the much-maligned in the polls Bideneconomics has triggered a strong growth in employment, but also in Germany and France. In Germany, employment has reached an all-time high of 45.3 million employed, exceeding the peak of 2019. A similar situation in France where employment is at record levels with 30,454,000 employed. The same happened in Italy where there are 23,975,000 employed. There have never been so many employed people in our country. Some doubts arise from the quality of the jobs offered, given that employment growth is higher than that of GDP, a sign that new hires they make a modest productive contribution and consequently receive low wages. Employment is growing, but with it also the working poorprecarious or low-wage jobs.
So Italy is in a very positive international economic cycle from the point of view of the quantity of hiring, less so from the point of view of the quality of work and wage. Employment follows the international economic cycle and not Renzi’s Jobs Act.
This conclusion is reinforced if we broaden our horizon and look at the labor market data of the last twenty years from the point of view of employment. The numbers show a very particular trend. In 2010, there were 21,450,000 employed people and then a long positive cycle began that brought employment to a first all-time high in 2018, with 23.2 million people employed. Then came the 2018 financial crisis and began a recession which destroyed almost two million jobs, with a minimum of 22,100,000 at the end of 2019. Finally, a new, very robust expansionary cycle has begun again, if we leave aside the interruption caused by the pandemic, which is still ongoing and has not been affected by war inflation. Employment has recovered and even surpassed the peak of 2018. The conclusion, although crude, is that the freedom to fire of the Jobs Act it counted for little. It is the dynamics of GDP that move employment and not those of politics. There may be some Renzian gust in this wind favorable to employment, but it appears completely marginal.
Now Senator Renzi, with one of his somersaults, is coming back to knock on the door of the progressives’ house. In a highly polarized democracy, where you win and lose by a hair’s breadth, nothing is thrown away and therefore the strategy of forgiveness could be implemented. But our Catholic culture imposes at least two conditions: a penance and the promise not to repeat the sin. Applied to the Renzi case, this could mean that first of all the Machiavelli of Rignano should do fine and recognize that the Jobs Act was a serious mistake; a gift, not even asked for, to Confindustria which appreciated it anyway. And then he should stop being a speaker for some Arab countries, they give up the succulent tokens. Moreover, I have always wondered what special skills he has and if he is not called only to give an appearance of democratic paint to ferocious authoritarian regimes. Shiny, well-paid paint.
However, in my opinion, under these conditions Renzi could also be readmitted into the increasingly larger and stronger team of progressives, perhaps staying on the bench as a reserve.
