CISL Congress, Meloni: "Dialogue with social partners is crucial for the government."

The CISL National Congress continues for its second day in Rome, at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in EUR. The live broadcast of the speeches follows.

In her speech, the Prime Minister said: "I am also here to demonstrate the centrality the government places on dialogue with the social partners, intermediate bodies, and workers, always keeping the general interest as its guiding principle."

" Today marks a thousand days since the government was in office . It seems a little longer to me, but it is a thousand. Enough time to indicate the direction taken and the work done. But I know I am rigid, and I know that more and better must be done," added the Prime Minister, recalling that "of these thousand days in government, the figure that makes me most proud is that on average, in each of these thousand days, more than a thousand new and permanent jobs have been created , for a total of over one million ."

"The government is currently working to avert a trade war with the United States , which would be senseless and would especially impact workers," the prime minister noted. "All our efforts," she added, "are directed toward this, clearly in collaboration with other leaders and with the European Commission, which has jurisdiction over this issue."

With the law on participation, " it is not the first time that the CISL has contributed to writing a page in the history of our nation , because it accompanied Italy during the years of the economic and demographic boom after the Second World War, but also during the most difficult moments of its history and it did so by taking responsibility for courageous decisions even when those decisions were unpopular" recalled the Prime Minister, citing the 1984 St. Valentine's Pact for the abolition of the sliding wage scale , suggested by the president of the CISL Institute of Economic and Labour Studies, Ezio Tarantelli , who "paid with his life for his courage for that idea" and is "a martyr of democracy , as President Mattarella defined him". Meloni then recalled 2002, when "after the murder of Marco Biagi, also at the hands of Red Brigades terrorism, the CISL had the courage to share with all social partners, with one exception, the law that bears his name, which aimed to bring undeclared work to light, to initiate a new work culture capable of keeping pace with the technological progress that was taking shape."

Elsewhere in her speech, Meloni recalled how "in recent years, we have chosen to focus most of our available resources on supporting the purchasing power of workers, especially those on lower incomes. You are as aware as I am that we are coming out of a long period of wage stagnation, which has severely penalized workers compared to the rest of Europe. However, for several months now, we have been seeing a reversal of the trend, although not yet sufficient. Since October 2023, wages have started to grow again faster than inflation ."

Elsewhere, the prime minister said: "We are the first government in Italy to have given the demographic issue the centrality it deserves, in words and deeds. I have always believed that public spending aimed at supporting the birth rate—and therefore services, family support, and work-life balance—is the one that, more than any other, can be considered a productive investment , an investment in the very future of our social systems, for Italy and for Europe."