Italy - 2012

In 2011, unemployment increased significantly, and in particular among youth, with peaks of 39% in the southern regions. Financial speculation, contributed to the collapse of the state budget, with the national debt at 120% of GDP. The government reacted with heavy cuts to state expenditures, reducing social services and imposing heavy sacrifices primarily on workers, pensioners and local authorities.

In November, the Berlusconi government resigned and a new government of “national coalition” was supported by a large majority in Parliament (95%), with the main goal of avoiding the state’s financial meltdown.

The first reforms introduced by the Monti Government targeted the pension system by introducing a criteria of 41-42 years worked to receive a pension (now based on a pro-rata of contributions) and raising the retirement age to 67 for both men and women progressively since 2013 to 2022.

As a result, hundreds of thousands of elderly workers, dismissed from companies before the approval of the new law (on many occasions according to collective bargaining collective bargaining The process of negotiating mutually acceptable terms and conditions of employment as well as regulating industrial relations between one or more workers’ representatives, trade unions, or trade union centres on the one hand and an employer, a group of employers or one or more employers’ organisations on the other.

See collective bargaining agreement
agreements), find themselves both without a job and without a pension.

The right to strike strike The most common form of industrial action, a strike is a concerted stoppage of work by employees for a limited period of time. Can assume a wide variety of forms.

See general strike, intermittent strike, rotating strike, sit-down strike, sympathy strike, wildcat strike is problematic with regards to essential services essential services Services the interruption of which would endanger the life, personal safety or health of the whole or part of the population. Can include the hospital sector, electricity and water supply services, and air traffic control. Strikes can be restricted or even prohibited in essential services.

See Guide to the ITUC international trade union rights framework
as the duration of and the reasons for a strike strike The most common form of industrial action, a strike is a concerted stoppage of work by employees for a limited period of time. Can assume a wide variety of forms.

See general strike, intermittent strike, rotating strike, sit-down strike, sympathy strike, wildcat strike must be announced in advance.

In 2009, the government froze public salaries for four years and also introduced job cuts, cancelling all precarious contracts in public education, in public research and in public administration in general. For the public education sector only, this meant a job loss of about 150,000 employees. In 2010 the government also proceeded to extend the retirement age for female public servants from 60 to 65, again without prior consultation. The government also introduced a new general system to put off the retirement age for one or two years for everyone reaching the legal pension age.

In 2011, the adoption of the European semester and of the Euro Pact Plus by the European Council has imposed severe measures on the Italian budget in order to reduce the debt. This decision has brought a renewed focus on cuts in public spending, with further reductions of precarious contracts in the public sector, particularly at the national administration level leading to the loss of as many as 35,000 jobs.

Italian legislation does not guarantee equal rights, conditions and protection to migrant workers as compared to Italian citizens. Migrant workers are excluded from public sector jobs, and there are differences in reciprocity agreements on pensions as well as access to social housing. With regard to welfare safety nets and policies for re-employment there is equality of rights, but migrant workers face a limitation of six months due to the term of the permit to stay in the country while seeking employment, in comparison to 12 months for nationals.

More than 500,000 irregular migrants are still living and working in the black labour market in Italy. Trade unions have denounced systematic violations of human and trade union rights for workers, mainly migrants, under the gang-master system (caporalato). The unions estimate that thousands of workers are subjected to human trafficking and slavery conditions.

In 2011, under pressure from trade union and public campaigns, a new law was approved recognising “caporalato” as a crime punishable with up to six year in prison.