Economy Minister Tremonti has just unleashed a debate on all the Italian newspapers stating that a permanent job is better than a precarious one. It's such an obvious statement, as he admitted himself, but caused a sensation because in our country at least since 10 years almost all political forces have carefully refrained from defending permanent work. Widespread precarious jobs with fixed-terms and low wages contracts are the land of toys for Italian companies, who have no intention of giving them up.
Who could ever compel them to do so in a country where the right and the left are competing to see who shows greater friendship to the Industrial association? The problem is what will the long-term consequences in a country where most young people do not have a steady job and did not even see one at the horizon. If we continue in this way in two or three decades we will have a whole section of society with no pension coverage after having lived all their life between unstable jobs and unemployment. It's a perspective of social suicide of the country.
In other European countries to avoid this disastrous scenario have been adopted since many years measures such as those proposed by economist Tito Boeri: a social safety net (today non-existent in Italy) for all periods of unemployment, a single national contract which provides at first the opportunity to fire the employee but becomes more stable with the passage of time. But Italy hasn't done anything like this and now seems unlikely that a government known for astonishing ads more than for facts really will have the aim and the ability to resolve the situation.
On the problem of non-tenured teachers, for example, the first government proposal, thankfully rejected in parliament by an agreement between the majority and opposition, precluded temporary teachers to accumulate seniority and enter on the staff.
Our country is poised to become a state with a minority of rich and wealthy, a small proportion of highly paid professionals and a majority of poor people, a pattern that resembles the worst disaster of unbridled capitalism in second and third world states, and that long term can only lead to riots, repression and misery. It would be nice to believe that the statement of Tremonti could create a serious reflection on a very serious and real danger, but in a country where all problems are generally left to grow and fester until they explode into a disaster, it is not easy to be optimistic .
Francesco Defferrari
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Comments
Come diceva qualcuno un pò più lungimirante di questi governanti, "se non paghiamo i nostri operai, chi comprerà le macchine che loro stesso costruiscono?"