Marianna Madia, she was head of Labor in the Renzi secretariat and minister of public administration in his government. Do you feel disavowed on the merits or is the problem political?
“I would say that I don’t agree with my secretary’s move from any point of view.”
Don’t you think that that reform favored the precarization of work?
“No. The Jobs Act abolished project contracts, false VAT numbers and blank resignations. It financed social safety nets for workers who didn’t have any. It arrived in a phase of fragmentation of the world of work and had the merit of starting the unification of rights.”
Ten years later no self-criticism?
«Reforms are processes. They should be implemented and monitored. I do not deny that implementation was partly lacking and that funding, such as that for the inclusion income, was activated late and perhaps insufficiently. But every government faces limited resources.”
The current secretary, however, has never considered the Jobs Act a valid instrument: she left the Democratic Party also because of your reform. Isn’t it an expression of coherence that you sign to cancel it?
«Elly Schlein from ten years ago is not the same as today. And today she is the secretary of my party. A still large and plural party, I hope. I find Landini’s signing of the referendum to be a lack of generosity and strategic vision: it does not help the candidates who are going to gather consensus for the European elections for the Democratic Party, and it has nothing to do with the imminent electoral deadline. We should talk about European integration, common defense, the environment and safety at work, which is dramatically urgent. We should bring the debate to issues that see us radically opposed to the Meloni government, not, however, oppose a government of the same PD as ten years ago.”
Schlein, recognizing different sensitivities on the topic, however clarified that he is signing in a personal capacity.
«The Democratic Party is not a personal party like others, fortunately. But it cannot even be a personal party. Can we invoke a sort of freedom of conscience on labor policies, the heart of a progressive party?”.
He seems to agree with Renzi when he says to you reformists “What are you still doing there?”: does he no longer feel at home in the Democratic Party?
«And couldn’t it be, on the contrary, that the Democratic Party should be changed? Long live different opinions, the party tends towards the model of the English Labor or the American Democratic Party. But a secretary who says that she signs a referendum against a reform of her party in a personal capacity, and does so a week after Conte and Fratoianni, what does it look like?
What does it look like to you?
“It seems to me that the ambition of the Democratic Party, the first opposition party, with a natural vocation to govern, cannot be to follow but to lead.”
