Prime Minister Meloni and her opponent yesterday, not by chance, also debated wages. A pressing issue in a country where the political overload on labor and the strong social control guaranteed by the unparalleled weight of collective bargaining have always combined with low productivity, low wages, and low employment.
While the opposition delegitimizes unions by demanding a nine-euro minimum wage by law, the Milan prosecutor’s office has even challenged some companies for the good faith application of a collective agreement signed by the major organizations.
The government, for its part, has instead decided to heavily use the State budget to support low incomes through the structural reduction of the tax wedge, the tax exemption of contractual increases, and the revision of income tax rates.
To re-legitimize bargaining, a model would now be needed that, on the one hand, prevents unfair underpayment methods and, on the other, promotes the growth of median wages wherever there is wealth to be distributed.
It could guarantee all workers at least the basic overall economic treatment (TEC) of the best sector contract that the CNEL can easily identify. We would be beyond the value of nine euros because not only have the latest renewals of many contracts exceeded that minimum hourly amount, but also because with the TEC all indirect wage items and the same social benefits allowed by the worker’s enrollment in collective funds are included.
The problem of median wages comes from the convergence between the natural tendency of business organizations to contain labor costs and the unnatural vocation of the union towards ideological flattening of wages. The solution is always to encourage company and territorial contracts for the distribution of bonuses and profits now tax-exempt.
