Meloni leaves work halfway: safety yes, fair wages no

Giorgia is trying a big shot and maybe she is trying seriously: we will only really understand this after the referendums on June 8 and 9. However, the start is real, otherwise the reactions of the secretary of the Cgil Landini and that of the Uil Bombardieri at the end of the long meeting with the government yesterday would not be explained. "I would be a fool if I did not admit that today, in terms of method, something different from what has happened up to now has happened. Whether the answers are what we ask for remains to be seen ." Landini is rightly very cautious : "For the first time we have found a willingness, at least on paper," he continues. Bombardieri is slightly more optimistic: " The meeting went well. Two of our requests were accepted: to set up a table at the Presidency of the Council on the topic of safety at work and to use the residues of the Inail budget to allocate them to safety."

Meloni herself opened the meeting, announced by the Prime Minister in the video message released on the eve of May 1st. She claimed the allocation of 1.2 billion for safety. She asked to "join efforts to root a culture of safety at work and prevent too many tragedies" . But politics, she admitted, "does not have all the answers" . Hence the invitation interpreted by the unions as an opening in terms of method: " We are here to listen, without prejudice". Listening alongside the president and in front of the representatives of all the unions was a large government delegation, more or less all the ministers and undersecretaries whose areas of competence concern work in various capacities: the Minister of Labor Calderone, of course, but also Tajani as deputy prime minister, Urso for Productive Activities and Foti for the PNRR, the undersecretary for the Economy Albano, the one for the presidency Mantovano and the president of Inail, the body from which the promised allocation will come, D'Ascenzio. The deployment in battle formation also meant the importance that Meloni intended to give to the meeting with the unions and to the one scheduled to follow with the " employers' associations".

The government, in truth, did not limit itself to listening. It also indicated, albeit in broad terms, the directions in which it intends to proceed. Training both in the workplace and in schools, a bet on the role of control figures, starting with workers' representatives, but above all incentives for businesses. The key, for the government, is rewards, starting with incentives for businesses with low accident rates. Landini relaunched by immediately putting two specific proposals on the table. First of all, a review of the credit-based driving license, a tool that the prime minister had cited to demonstrate the executive's commitment to the matter. "It should be extended to all activities but also revised because as it is it is useless" , replied the secretary of the CGIL. Then he and Bombardieri put on the table the request for a discussion "on the logic of subcontracting", obtaining the consent of the government delegation: "We asked to cancel the cascade subcontracting and return the responsibility to the client: what we are asking for in the referendum, which is the solution to the problem of cascade subcontracting".

It is likely that the imminent referendum itself explains at least in part the Prime Minister's decision to do what she had avoided in the last two years: to try to open a real dialogue with the unions . Giorgia knows perfectly well that work, understood as security, rights and wages, is the real weak point of her government. She and the Minister of Economy Giorgetti have chosen to privilege credibility in Europe and on the markets even at the cost of penalizing a part of the right-wing electoral base: those who accuse the leader of FdI of putting in first place today what she was targeting from the stands of the opposition are not wrong: the spread, the rating agencies, compliance with the parameters.

On that ground today the Prime Minister feels confident enough to open a probably real discussion, structured through thematic tables in which a compromise will be sought between the broad lines indicated by the government and the proposals of the unions. It is no coincidence, however, that there has been and will be talk of security, which is a fundamental issue, but not of wages, which are equally so. There the margins for Giorgia are very limited. Not for the League , however, which has launched with two proposals, a 5% tax under 30 and linking wages to inflation , which are at least audacious. How the allies and the Minister of Economy himself, even though he is a member of the League, will react will say a lot about the reality of the right's attempt to put its tricolor cloak also on work.

FROM

David Romoli