INPS data low wages
«42.5% of workers in the private sectors in Puglia live on an average annual gross salary of 10 thousand euros or less. We are talking about 360 thousand people. For 145 thousand of them it doesn’t go much beyond 5 thousand euros gross. In Italy and even more so in Southern regions such as Puglia, there is a dramatic wage emergency that only the right and more conservative sectors of the business world can deny as such.” This is what the general secretary of the CGIL Puglia, Gigia Bucci, says, commenting on the calculations of the Economy Office of the national CGIL on INPS 2022 data, which do not include the agricultural sector, an important sector in our territory and characterized by seasonality and low wages.
«The average annual gross salary of the total of 850 thousand workers in the private sectors amounts to 16,942 euros, which net translates into just over 1,100 euros per month. But the detail reveals an even more serious reality. From reading the report – structured on type of contract, working hours, period of paid employment – it is clear that among the main causes of low wages at regional level are work discontinuity, widespread part-time work, contractual precariousness”, he explains Bucci. In fact, there are over 125 thousand workers who, despite having a permanent and full-time contract, due to the discontinuity of work, earn less than 20 thousand euros gross per year in salary. Even worse are those who, despite having a permanent contract, stop at 9 thousand euros a year due to part-time and intermittent relationships. There are over 100 thousand men and women in this condition.”
The general secretary of the CGIL Puglia underlines how «there are some structural elements that must be attacked to address the issue of poor wages. The production structure in our region is affected by the prevalence of low value-added sectors, primarily the tertiary sector and services, and the low production and therefore work specialization. It is therefore necessary to invest in increasing the quality of services and products, through research and innovation. But this clashes with another limiting element, which is that of the prevailing small company size. As CGIL we insist on the need to invest in manufacturing, first and foremost by defending the industrial system that exists and must be accompanied in the ongoing transitions so that it can connect value chains and not remain on the global market, compressing wages and rights”.
Together, there is a more general fact, «which concerns a necessary recomposition of work and the rules that regulate it. A fragmented labor market, characterized mainly by precarious forms and involuntary part-time. Just as it is unavoidable, in the face of the explosion of inflation which has eroded income from work since 2021, an increase in wages through negotiation, with a discussion free from ideological conditioning on the need to introduce the provision of a salary into contracts minimum. The slowdown in inflation is not enough, we need to recover how much purchasing power people have.” The four referendums promoted by the CGIL are aimed at modifying some of the distortions in the labor market, to cancel regulations that have weakened the rights and made workers more susceptible to blackmail. It is the reason why we invite everyone to sign at the stands that the CGIL promotes in each territory or even online via Spid”.
On the topic of wage poverty, concludes Bucci, «we proposed to the Region the establishment of an observatory, during a hearing held in the VI Council Commission. Istat certifies the increase in poverty among those who work, and with these wages it can only be so. The right-wing government ignores reality, telling Italians fairy tales. We move forward with tax amnesties and building abuses, while on the other hand, fixed-term contracts are liberalized and support for low incomes is removed. As if all the precariousness that already exists wasn’t enough. In this context, a regional observatory can be a tool for analysis and study on wage poverty to provide politics, institutions and social partners with knowledge tools for negotiation and to support measures and regulations that try to counteract this social and economic hardship. . This is why we ask the Region, given the interest expressed in the Commission by the councilors present, to start a discussion as soon as possible for the structuring of the Observatory”.
Tuesday 4 June 2024
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