Naples, minimum wage at 9 euros an hour: the Municipality’s resolution is ready

Minimum wage of 9 euros per hour, resolution ready. The municipal councilor for employment, Chiara Marciani, will present it to the traders’ associations. The provision arises from an amendment to the budget estimate approved on an agenda of the councilor of Napoli Solidale, Sergio d’Angelo. «This is a first draft – explains Marciani – from Thursday (tomorrow for those reading, ed.) we will begin consultations with the associations involved and the unions and as soon as this round is finished we will approve the resolution in the council». The provision commits the Municipality to indicate in all tender procedures that “the collective agreement most relevant to the activity carried out stipulated by the comparatively most representative employers’ and trade unions’ organizations is applied to personnel employed in works, services and supplies subject to public tenders and concessions, without prejudice to the most favorable treatments”.

But the innovative point of the draft is another: Palazzo San Giacomo will have to “verify that the contracts of the staff of the institution, its subsidiaries and those of the economic operators indicated in the tender procedure provide for a mandatory minimum salary equal to 9 euros per hour ”. In the case of tenders and applications of different collective agreements, “the administration must ensure that the different collective agreement indicated by the economic operators at the time of the offer must provide for a mandatory minimum wage of 9 euros per hour”. In the draft resolution the Municipality also undertakes to organize meetings with the unions “in order to verify how to achieve the objective for the municipal administration that all existing contracts provide for a mandatory minimum salary of 9 euros per hour” .

Once the resolution has been passed to the council and then to the Council, anyone who has contracts with the Municipality will have to pay their employee no less than the established minimum wage. But moreover, what is taking shape is an expansive resolution that could be extended to anyone who has commercial relationships with the Municipality and, just to give an example, also to those who request the occupation of public land. So it could also concern bars and restaurants. The minimum wage is part of the objective “considered an absolute priority” by the mayor Gaetano Manfredi of “taking every possible initiative to ensure high quality working conditions and an adequate salary for workers, especially in the context of the activities and services that the Municipality sees protagonist as employer or contracting authority”.