Cesare Damiano Speaks: “Workers, Go Vote for Your Rights”

Cesare Damiano, Minister of Labor in the second Prodi government from 2006 to 2008 and now president of the association Lavoro&Welfare, the second highest office in the state, the president of the Senate Ignazio La Russa, who publicly declares: “ I will campaign for abstention in the referendums of June 8 and 9”. The leaders of the right who exalt the political choice of not voting. The state TV, and not only, which has blacked out the referendums. What kind of democracy is this and why are people afraid of these referendums? As for La Russa, you said it: the second highest office of the State. The point is that what was called the “sense of State” is increasingly being lost. When you hold institutional positions, even if you come from a political party, you need to have the ability to be super partes. President Mattarella, in his second term, has never said a word out of place. Never. He has constantly acted as interpreter and guarantor of the Constitution. All of us, whatever our opinions, can look at Mattarella, who has certainly not been less of a political militant in his life than La Russa, and feel represented. Larussa simply does not seem to have understood that by assuming the Presidency of the Senate, he had the obligation to step down from his barricade. It is a great shame for our institutions. As for abstention, with abrogative referendums, which require a quorum, every citizen can make their own free and sovereign choice. Yes, even not going to vote. But not voting means giving up a right. It means giving up expressing one's thoughts and giving direction to those who then have to make the laws. As Mattarella said in recent days: without the vote in the Referendum of June 2, 1946, our Republic would not exist. Do you think that law is good or not? Do you need reinstatement for unlawful dismissals or not? Do you need clients to be responsible for safety on construction sites in the presence of contracts or not? Is it right that those who reside, study, work legally in this country can apply for citizenship after 5 years - as in other advanced countries - instead of 10? Taking on, among other things, not only the advantages, but all the duties of citizenship. And so on.

The malcontents also live in the center-left. We know about Calenda and Renzi, but even within the PD there is an anti-Schlein rebellion. The leitmotif is always the same: the Democratic Party's campaign on the referendums is a gift to the right. There have always been malcontents, and they usually stay under the radar. I respect all opinions, but if in the Democratic Party there are still those who are in love with Renzi who, let's remember, brought the PD to the historic low of 18%, and then left to form his own bush, I throw up my hands. In the meantime, many false arguments are circulating. The first of these is that the Referendums are against the Jobs Act. Whoever says so, evidently, does not know the subject. The Jobs Act is a Delegated Law, 183 of 2014, from which 8 Legislative Decrees arose, 7 of which are not affected by the Referendums . Only the first, 23/2015, the one concerning “increasing protections” , is the subject of question number 1. In this regard, it should be noted that the Constitutional Court, not Landini or Schlein or Meloni, cancelled, deeming it unconstitutional, the “automatic” compensation mechanism for increasing protections that links monetary compensation to seniority of service in the event of unlawful dismissal. Renzi's mechanism, developed by Nannicini who still defends it against all evidence, was two months' salary for each year of seniority, within a range of months originally indicated as a minimum of 4 and a maximum of 24. Only later, with the so-called " Dignity Decree " (87/2018), these limits were brought to 6 and 36 respectively. In this way , Article 18 of the Workers' Statute was definitively cancelled, even in the weaker version of the Monti-Fornero Law of 2012. A centre-left party that "gives" workers a reduction in protection from dismissals should not be surprised if workers, employees and technicians, that is, the world of work in its various and segmented articulations, no longer votes left, except in a minority. The first Referendum, therefore, addresses a specific issue: the definitive possibility of reinstatement in the workplace even for those who were hired after March 7, 2015, when the first delegated decree of the Jobs Act came into force, and who were fired unlawfully. The Referendum corrects this disparity: reinstatement must apply to everyone, not just those who were hired before March 6, 2015. It seems to me a legitimate and socially just choice and the arguments of those who argue otherwise seem to me to be unfounded. Nannicini says: the monthly compensation payments are lowered from 36 to 24 (those initially provided for by the Jobs Act), but he forgets to say that there is reinstatement in the workplace. This demonstrates how far politics is from the needs of normal people. In your opinion, will a sensible worker, between a few more monthly payments and returning to the place from which he was fired, not choose the second solution that will make him stronger towards the company?

To stay with the Dems, the hypercriticals of the Secretary maintain, more or less explicitly, that no matter what happens, Elly Schlein will hand herself over to Landini. Those involved in politics should know that every void is filled. Would it have been better to have an initiative from the parties, especially from the center-left? Of course. But there has been no decision on dismissals, despite the fact that the Constitutional Court wrote in 2022, sentence 183, which states that "The reform of the discipline of dismissals is essential". The matter, after numerous and heterogeneous legislative interventions, has become very tangled and stratified in a disorderly way and, even after the desirable victory of the YES in the Referendums, it will need to be revisited. I hope that this battle, extremely participated, which has seen the support of the left-wing parties and has given strength and motivation to hundreds of associations in the territories, will also give a push to the legislator and a new awareness to workers about the opportunity to regain a new and modern profile of protections. It should be remembered that Andrea Orlando presented his own bill to repeal Legislative Decree 23 of 2015 in good time, but it remained a dead letter. To each his own job: the CGIL is fighting for workers' rights, the PD and the other centre-left parties are offering legislative support, as the Workers' Statute did in its time

The government claims that if the Yes vote wins the referendum, there will be an increase in unemployment. Is that true? This, of course, is pure propaganda. Why should layoffs increase, especially if they are more protected? Why should hiring decrease? If that were the case, it means that hiring and firing currently costs little. And it is right to give more protection to work if we want the quality of the production system, which is so much talked about at conferences. The latest data speak of growing employment, of an activity rate of 62.7%, a historic record. But if we read the latest CNEL report, it tells us that in the face of more employed people, the hours worked decrease and that the areas of difficulty in the labor market persist, which are called young people and women. The former, those who have studied more, have taken the path of emigration, in search of better wages and career paths. Women have 1 part-time job out of 3 compared to 1 in 12 for men.

Some say that a victory for the Yes would lead to an unsustainable increase in costs. More burdensome layoffs and more difficult contracts would put many companies that are already struggling to stay on the market into crisis. Since the 1980s, the narrative that has prevailed has been that of the flexibility of work organization and the use of labor. A narrative that has gone hand in hand with the overcoming of the Ford-Taylorist model of large companies. But everything soon changed, from the idea of ​​good flexibility as a synthesis of the new needs of workers and companies, to precariousness with its corollary of job instability and low wages. It is no coincidence that today we have almost 3 million poor workers in the labor market. According to the surveys of the Centro Studi di Lavoro&Welfare, from 2008 to 2024 there has been a structural shift in hours worked from the manufacturing sector (-19%) to the services sector (+6%). That is to say, from the better paid sectors and with greater job stability, to those with lower wages and discontinuous work. If we want, in the time of the return of protectionism and the geopolitical rewriting of the areas of influence, to compete on innovation and on the high segments of artificial intelligence, and not be crushed, we can no longer bet on a low-quality production model that plays its cards only on the lowest labor costs. This also emerged in the recent hearing of Mario Draghi, on the occasion of the presentation of the Report on the future of European competitiveness, during which he stated: " not only should internal demand be favored, but a clear reversal of the trend should be made with respect to the recipes adopted following the financial market crisis of 2010, based on the contraction of public budgets and the compression of wages, as a competitive factor with respect to other countries of the Union" . From this point of view, the Referendums represent a healthy shock to a sleepy system.

Among the referendum questions is the one against wild contracts, which aims to combat the tragedy of deaths at work. The tragedy of workplace deaths is before our eyes . Although we cannot forget the peak reached in 1963, at the time of the economic boom, which in that year was 4,622 workplace deaths, for about 15-20 years now we have been hovering around 1,000 deaths per year, 3 per day, a truly unacceptable massacre. To be precise, 1,041 in 2023, 1,090 in 2024 and, in the first three months of this year, a +9% compared to the same period of the previous year. The most common causes of death and injury are falls from heights in construction, overturning tractors in agriculture and serial falls into settling wells and cisterns. The danger also lurks, as we know, in the cascade of contracts, brought back into fashion by this Government. Therefore, the Referendum represents an appropriate response and puts its finger on the wound. The new frontiers of prevention and protection of health and safety in the workplace will be played out above all, as the report of the International Labour Organization reminded us, with the use of new digital technologies and Artificial Intelligence. As always, there are opportunities and risks: the digital construction site, microchips in Personal Protective Equipment, monitoring web apps, fall airbags, and so on, represent some of the new prevention tools. The risks of technostress, invasion of privacy and intensification of work activity governed by algorithms, represent the other side of the coin. We hope that the government-initiated bill on Artificial Intelligence, currently under discussion in Parliament, will be amended to also take into account the protection of the psychophysical integrity of workers when it comes to investments. In addition to this, the role of union bargaining will be decisive for the regulation, control and adoption of these new technologies for the protection and professional growth of workers. In conclusion: voting yes to the 5 Referendums is the right choice to address the issues of work and citizenship out of the swamps of job insecurity and social exclusion.

FROM

Umberto DeGiovanniangeli