Edward Romagnoli
May 26, 2023
After the post-electoral disaster silence of the administrations Giuseppe Conte announces a demonstration in the square in Rome on 17 June. And he does it with a video on social media that has certainly not gone unnoticed. The screen divided in half, in technical terms a split screen, on one side Giorgia Meloni, in black and white, on the other the people’s advocate in color. The beginning is entrusted to the Prime Minister, the video is the famous one in which he announced the Labor Law on May 1st. Just enough time to start then the speech is interrupted with a special effect worthy of Bollywood, popular Indian cinema. Conte pushes Meloni out of the frame and the screen comes back whole for him. To say what? That the government has introduced “greater precariousness” with “increasingly fixed-term contracts, more and more vouchers”. This is a leitmotif of the opposition but if we look in detail it is not quite so. Article 24 of the decree law of 1 May provides for the possibility of fixed-term employment without the constraint of motivation for a period of 12 months. If companies want to extend the fixed-term contract up to a maximum of 24 months, they will have to justify it by indicating a reason provided for in the applicable collective agreement. Of the approximately 18.3 million people who carry out paid employment, 15.3 million are permanent and 3 million temporary; a percentage, around 16.4, in line with the EU average. If we look at the number of new entrants into the world of work, almost two-thirds are fixed-term contracts, so why are there few “precarious” contracts? Simple, because most of these then turn into permanent contracts. This does not mean that precariousness is not a problem but it is certainly not a problem created by this decree.
But let’s go ahead. Second point: the government has cut social spending, therefore no more basic income. The failure of the Citizenship Income as it was thought has been widely certified. In 2022, Istat showed how, since the introduction of the welfare measure, the vacancy rate has increased from 1.4 to 1.9% in two years; about 115,000 more vacancies than when there was no basic income. It is true that this government has cut it but to replace it with a measure that supports those who cannot work and try to find a job for the employable. Third point: the government cannot find the money for those in need but finds it to send arms and ammunition to Ukraine. A hoax already denied at the time by Giorgia Meloni who said: «We don’t spend money to buy weapons that we send to the Ukrainians. We already have weapons that we don’t use and therefore there is nothing we are taking away from the Italians». From here on comes a flurry of “arguments at will”. Schools ‘falling apart’, ‘legal minimum wage’, ‘health heroes’ and ‘mortgage hikes’. All together so much in communication on social media the content is not important, you need a couple of slogans and two effective transitions.
