Italy: keeping the pressure high
The Refounded Communists (Rifondazione) have repeatedly tried to force the centre-left Prodi government to discuss the unemployment question seriously. Without much success. Gianni Rigacci
In October, Rifondazione finally jobs so far offered seem to come from mainly small entrepreneurs, looking to pick up a couple of workers who cost almost nothing. Under the scheme, the monthly salary during these 10-12 month "training placements" will be 800,000 lira (US$450) for 20 hours/week work. Employers are supposed to give regular contracts to those who complete these placements, and will benefit from a range of tax and social security reductions.
Italy *
In a number of larger enterprises, employers are now insisting on inserting into collective bargaining agreements a clause allowing re-negotiation if the 35 hour week is adopted. Workers in the paper industry recently struck for eight hours to protest this tendency.
The European Parliament's recent vote condemning the legal reduction of the working week encouraged all opponents of the 35 hour week. So did the Euroforced the Prodi government to introduce legislation for a 35 hour week, starting in 2001. The mass media immediately launched a virulent attack on the party. BENEFITS Using means with which Rifondazione cannot compete - the party's own newspaper Liberazione is in such big trouble that there have even been strikes against the "restructuring" project.
These attacks continued/intensified in January, as parliament discussed the
ANYTHING TO DECLARE?
details of the project. The conservative parties are using all the means at their disposal to prevent the timetable being maintained.
Towards the end of 1997, the government implemented two measures which go in the opposite direction to a reduction in
BAR WORK DOWN working time. The first was to adopt the European Union directive fixing a maxi- AT THE 10G+ JUCK mum working week of 48 hours. The agreement on this subject between trade unions, the employers' organisation Confindustria and the government reveals two common goals — bring Italy into line with EU directives, and practice the strategy for isolating Rifondazione which all three "partners" realised would be necessary when the debate on the 35 hour week started.
This tripartite agreement, which, when implemented, will replace 1923 legislation, will introduce, for the first time, a definition of 40 hours as the 'normal' working time. Hours in excess of this will not be counted as overtime (as is common practice at the moment) but compensated for by time off "during a multi-week period, which cannot exceed one year." In other words, flexibility.
The Minister of Labour claims that 200,000 jobs will be offered through nou ge me armits that fero these joe, scheme. will go to currently unemployed people. Most will be people currently working in the huge "black" (undeclared) economy, or workers who are currently obliged by their employers to register and pay tax as autonomous entrepreneurs.
This initiative is likely to have no effect whatsoever in reducing unemployment.Some will be private sector jobs, others "socially useful" work, paid by local administrations. Most of the 165,000
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"Given France and Italy's declaration of our desire to promote a common European labour policy, the government promises to present, in January 1998, draft legislation establishing the reduction of the working week to 35 hours, from 1 January 2001.
This reduction will apply to all enterprises with more than 15 employees."
Extract from the agreement between Rifondazione leader Fausto Bertinotti and Prime
* The 35 hour week in Europe Parliament's resolution inviting member states to increase "flexible labour and working hours through non-legislative and non-restrictive channels, on the basis of social dialogue at the enterprise level."
This is clearly an operation to surround the French and Italian governments, both of which have announced their intention to begin the process of reducing weekly working time. A lively debate
Ever since the Prodi government promised legislation for the 35 hour week, Ministers have been using the media to express a range of reservations and objections to their own promises. Labour Minister reu openly admits to being convinced" about the proposal, and reassures employers that "there is plenty of time to discuss the framework law, and after that there will be three years to negotiate [the details.]"
The trade union confederations have also reacted negatively. Except for metalworker leaders in both the CISL and CGIL confederations, and the PRC-identified currents in the CGIL. Overall, however, the CSIL and the smaller UIL confederation are openly opposed to the 35 hour project. The CGIL labour confederation is in favour of a framework law which would encourage social partners to make
As a general rule, trade union leaders resent any Rifondazione initiative which threatens to overtake them from the left, or challenge the social harmony strategy which they have been pursuing desperately for a number of years ever since the Clampi government). The end of history?
The strongest attacks on the 35 hour project come, not surprisingly, from ConJinaustria, the employers organisation. Their massive media offensive against those who call for a reduction in the working week makes abundant use of former trade union leaders who have "seen journalists from all currents, academics with a (past) reputation for proworker sympathies, and the usual unscrupulous intellectuals.
The General Director of Confindustria recently declared that "we would need 80100 years to be able to move from 40 to 35 hours/week." In his opinion, rical tendency towards the reduction in labour time is destined to stop." He doesn't explain why, when or how.
In contrast, the British author Jeremy Kıtkın calculates that productivity in Italy actually makes it possible to move past 35 28 International Viewpoint #297 hours, to 30 hours in the foreseeable future, without loss of salary. Does anybody care?
Most worrying for the left, however, is the attitude of sectors of the working population itself. There is simply not the same demand for a reduction in the working week as there was after the first world war, when Italian workers won the eight hour day, or in the 60s and 70s, when the 40 hour week was imposed across Europe. Those demands emerged spontaneously, amid wide layers of the working population. The eight hour day was the result of 50 years of struggles, and was seen at the time as a minimum demand by the workers' movement. The 40 hour week was pushed forward by assembly-line workers, and others doing the dirtiest and most unpleasant jobs.
The situation today is more like that in the United States in the 1930s, during the great depression. Reduction in individual labour time can hardly emerge spontaneously, since the high level of unemployment is allowing the steady erosion of real wages. According to the Bank of Italy, the disposable income of the average family fell by 5.2% in 1993 and a further 0.3% in 1994. In '95 and '96 it grew by less than
In this context, it is hardly surprising that those who have work are mainly concerned with increasing their income. Hence the massive amount of overtime work. According to a recent ISFOL survey, the average Italian worker works 39.9 hours/week, 20% work more than 52.8 hours/week. [These high averages were calculated for the whole working population, including the 7% of the labour force which works only part time.]
"Experts" insist that, where conditions permit, employers and trade unions are already negotiating reductions in working hours, without the need of a "constraining law on the 35 hour week.
But there are only a handful of examples. All of which, incidentally, involve terrible concessions by the workforce in terms of flexibility. The result for these workers has been to destroy their right to free time at fixed moments (evenings, weekends, school holidays). And there has been no creation of jobs to replace the hours "saved."
If the left is unable to lead struggles demanding cuts in the working week, linking the interests of workers, the unemployed and students - the potential unemployed - there is a real risk that the 35 hour week will remain an abstract
The Belgian government is determined to prevent the 35 hour week becoming the central element of the unemployment debate. Alain Tondeur Belgium's official unemployment rate is 12.7%. Though this statistic now excludes all those older than 50, as well as the growing number of unemployed people who have lost the right to social security
The total number of people dependent on the National Employment office is closer to 27% of the workforce. In some regions of Wallonia (the French-speaking south of the country 25 or 30% of adults are out of work. And more than half of the 'official' unemployed have been out of work for at least two years.
In response to this human waste, the government has presented no less than 28 successive plans for employment. "Piled up like carpets in a Mosque, " commented Michel Jadot, General Secretary at the Ministry of Employment. The result of these initiatives is zero. This is hardly surprising, since "job creation" is a pretext and packaging for policies seeking to flexibilise the labour market, weaken the trade unions, and reduce salary-related costs. The European Union's 1994 Essen summit fixed the axes of employment policy as: reducing costs; redistributing
"target groups' into the labour force, and improving training.
In Belgium, the official quest for employment has involved:
• Allowing employers to propose four successive fixed-term contracts, of at least three months duration, in a maximum period of two years.
• Allowing employers to vary working hours by two hours above or below the contractual daily limit, and five hours above or below the weekly limit. The period of time over which the weekly average must be respected has been increased to a full year.
• Part-time work has been massively encouraged, and is now the experience of 14% of the workforce: three percent of men, and 30% of women! It is still a marginal phenomenon in industry, but the government is taking lessons from other countries on changing that.
• Reducing or eliminating employers' contributions to social security. In 1996 this saved employers almost 59 million
BEF (US$1.64m.). Categories affected include most manual workers, those affected by workplace "job creation" programmes (which may simply involve splitting an existing post into two part time positions), the first three employees of any new company, any person registered as unemployed, or out of work for a long period and drawing social security payments; anyone hired on a low wage ($600-1,690/month);