In Lazio alone, there are 400,000 elderly people who are alone. Many, many of them, need assistance. Which, often, they struggle to find or have. And it is enough to do calculations and projections, as Nuova Collaborazione, the national association of domestic workers, has done, to understand that if there are 117,500 housekeepers and carers, admitting that these two professions are also useful to other families in the Region (and not only, precisely, to elderly people who are alone), in fact at least 300,000 would be missing from the roll call. And among these, the black economy is very high: people who go to work at home but do not receive the contributions that they are entitled to.
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CHANGE
The situation – underline from Nuova Collaborazione – has worsened in the post-pandemic period because during the lockdown there was a great emergence of irregular work precisely to allow domestic workers and carers to have permits to go and provide their work. Today, however, we have gone back. The numbers come from an analysis carried out on INPS data on working at home, divided on a regional basis. In 2023 in Lazio there were, as mentioned, 117,500 domestic workers, a decrease of 4.5% compared to 2022. A sharp turn which according to experts would be due precisely to the return to the old habits of the employment relationship with a “squeeze of hand”, also because the population is increasingly aging and there is an ever-increasing need in families for people capable of helping. There was also a decline at a national level. Suffice it to say that last year (again according to the INPS Observatory on domestic work in Italy) there were 833,874 contributing family workers, with a decrease compared to 2022 of -7.6%. A phenomenon that clashes, however, with the increases seen in the two-year period between 2020 and 2021.
«The domestic worker has become central in the organization of care work, the home and the family, left alone in the management of non-self-sufficient loved ones, without structural and lasting welfare policies to support him, explains Alfredo Savia, president of Nuova Collaboration – it is necessary to develop specific programs and guarantee long-lasting fiscal aid which, on the one hand, brings undeclared work to light and, on the other, allows families not to be the only person responsible for managing the home, caring for children children, elderly parents and non-self-sufficient people”. To support the emergence of the black economy, Nuova Collaborazione asks to include the world of domestic workers and carers in the Government’s measures to support new hires. «We warmly welcome the maxi tax deduction, foreseen by the Irpef reform, approved by the Government, whose implementing decree has been published on the website of the Department of Finance, which concerns permanent hiring. An important benefit which represents a significant step to support employment – comments Filippo Breccia Fratadocchi, vice-president of the association – We cannot, however, help but express our regret in seeing, once again, the domestic work sector excluded from this type of intervention, despite the fundamental role played in managing the family’s care work and despite the family itself representing a small business. Families who hire domestic staff are to all intents and purposes employers and should therefore take advantage of the benefits that apply to other sectors, at least when they need assistance for non-self-sufficient people”.
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