(Finance) – “The issue of inflation must be addressed because we cannot allow the full weight of the rise in prices to fall on wages.”
The undersecretary for the economy said it, Maria Cecilia Guerra, interviewed on Radio Anch’io on Rai Radio 1. Commenting on the words of the Governor of the Bank of Italy, she stressed that “Visco’s concern is to prevent them from being incorporated into contracts of the increases in inflation that have not yet stabilized “but” certainly we cannot even take the opposite side, that is to make contractual renewals in which the sharp increase in inflation is not taken into account in any way “. So, he concluded, “the attention not to trigger this spiral must not be the justification for keeping those wages compressed that should in any case be increased”.
Well the agreement in the EU on the minimum wage which, explains Guerra, “is only one of the tools. The aim is perfectly right and that is to avoid poor and underpaid work which in Italy is very strong especially in some sectors”. “You can give minimal protection but it’s not enough – she continued – because the poverty of work is also linked to the quantity of work. You work a few hours, or rather, you work a few hours in good standing. And this creates the impossibility of having a decent job for a country like ours that invests precisely in the poverty of work to hold together sectors that otherwise would not be profitable due to their quality. “Be careful also to indicate a level because, he stressed, “the wage is a set of cost elements that must probably also be considered sector by sector and in agreement with the social partners “.
There EU directive aims at the dignity of pay which can be achieved with a mix of tools. In Italy we have a very strong collective bargaining and this is why we did not feel the need for a minimum wage. In the current situation, however, we need to be sure that this bargaining protects everyone and in the best possible way “, explains Guerra.” This means first of all strengthening collective bargaining – he added – by making a law on representation to avoid what is happening now, namely that in a certain sector there is a national collective labor agreement that sets parameters not only on wages but on all other cost elements, overtime, benefits and all the protections that a contract brings with it, and then in a a single company a trade union sign created ad hoc signs an agreement that circumvents this contract “.