“We appreciate the connection between public tenders and employment contracts to be applied in the new procurement code because how Confcooperative Toscana Nord we strongly believe in the need for the country to introduce afair salary‘ not a ‘minimum wage’. Procurement must protect the right work by archiving the tragic season of the race to the bottom experienced at the expense of workers”. This is what he says Lorenzo Giuntini, president of Confcooperative Toscana Nord speaking in the debate on the procurement code.
In Italy, purchases of goods and services by the public administration are worth 290 billion, over 15 percent of GDP (Anac source). In Tuscany it is estimated that public leverage is worth around 5 billion euros a year.
“In Italy and Tuscany, public tenders by the PA represent a powerful lever of economic and social development – adds Giuntini – and it is important to introduce elements of guarantee in terms of collective labor agreements. For this reason we believe that the connection between contract and salary makes the need to adapt tariffs even more evident. The non-compressibility of labor costs must be an element shared by all in the development and strengthening of public leverage to support the national but also territorial economy. It is necessary that the PA begins to consider the cost of labor no longer a variable of supply but rather a structural element of good business and investment capacity”.
For Giuntini, however, “work remains to be done in the area for a correct implementation of the provisions, also by implementing some parts of the code which see companies called to work in co-planning with the contracting authorities or with the reference body”.
Finally, on the topic of cooperation as a form of business, the president of Confcooperative Toscana Nord calls for “recognition of the specificity of cooperatives as an enterprise made up of human capital and work, two absolutely essential components without which cooperatives can become a tool in the hands of dangerous speculators. Sometimes we hear about ‘bad cooperation’but it is a fundamentally wrong concept because the one made by speculators has nothing to do with cooperation, therefore ‘bad cooperation’ does not exist because it is not cooperation”.
