Abstract
In recent years, Italian legislation seems to have accomplished a ‘corporatisation’ of collective bargaining in response to employers’ demands, without the filter of national collective bargaining. Article 8 of Law No. 148/2011 made it possible to deviate from legislative provisions and industry-wide collective bargaining on a wide range of topics. The Legislative Decrees implementing the Jobs Act in 2015 have gone even further, allowing the possibility of a different regulation both through different levels of collective bargaining and through individual agreements. Faced with these changes in the balance of power, collective bargaining has been weakened. Nevertheless, a number of national sectoral agreements have provided for ambitious efforts to establish a new relationship between the levels of collective bargaining or the mechanisms of collective agreements, as well as to re-regulate forms of workers’ representation. As these national agreements are based on the voluntary compliance of workers’ organisations and employers’ associations, their implementation and enforcement in order to be effective will need to be accompanied by a re-establishment of the role of collective bargaining.
Introduction
For several years now there has been a discussion about the crisis of collective bargaining. But whether it is a hypothetical or a real problem remains controversial. Indeed, in Italy some of the indicators normally used to assess union density and collective bargaining coverage have not experienced major declines and have stood up better than the EU average. 1
However, the Italian collective bargaining system and structure is peculiar inasmuch as, in the absence of legal rules on trade union and employer association representativeness or of legal criteria pertaining to hierarchy or coordination between collective agreements, it is based on the autonomous – and therefore fragile – balance achieved by the social partners and their self-regulation. The model is traditionally based on a coordinated two-tier system, with industry-level collective labour agreements (Contratto collettivo nazionale di categoria, CCNL) and decentralised collective agreements at company or territorial level, the former being dominant in terms of scope and coverage. 2 In recent years it has come under strong attack, however. Some deem it to be obsolete due to the internationalisation of markets (and competition), as well as the economic downturn. No attack has been more striking than in the Fiat case, where in a long and complex sequence of events that developed between 2010 and 2011, the largest Italian automobile manufacturing company claimed to be unwilling ‘to operate in Italy in a framework of uncertainties that set it apart from the conditions existing throughout the industrialised world’. The company withdrew from the metalworking sectoral agreements and its representative employers’ association (Confindustria), formed new companies for each existing plant (avoiding the transfer-of-undertaking procedures and obligations) and launched a new collective bargaining system, outside the traditional framework, based only on first-level agreements. As a possible effect – perhaps as the Achilles heel – of a voluntary system, the case reinforced a widespread opinion that if the (economic) weather is unpredictable, the (social) response should be ‘adaptable’. Hence, the alleged crisis of collective bargaining is really a crisis of industry-wide collective bargaining. There is a strongly held view that a new balance – if not an overturning of the current state of affairs – should be struck in favour of flexibility, not only of employment contracts, but also of collective labour relations, increasing decentralisation and widening margins for exemptions (Bavaro, 2012).
The debate, whose onset predates the 2008 crisis and which has already met with a response in most European countries, with a general loosening up of procedures in multi-level bargaining (Marginson, 2015), has also found its way into Italian legislation. The call for a ‘corporatisation’ of industrial relations – that is, replacing the traditional reference to the sector or industry with the individual company as the focus for common regulation (Ales, 2011) – has been taken up, and in some cases encouraged, by a very close sequence of interventions designed to combat the critical rates of unemployment and to revive business productivity.
The aim of this article is to inquire how the legislative measures of the past few years have impacted the Italian industrial relations system and examine what promising counter-measures have been taken by the social partners. To conclude, we will outline prospects for development.
Italian legislation from ‘proximity bargaining’ to the Jobs Act: ‘the road to hell is paved with good intentions’
Although Italian legislation had already experimented with forms of devolution and, since the 2003 labour market reform, had allowed regulation through not only national but also decentralised collective agreements, Article 8, Decree-law No. 138 of 13 August 2011 (converted into statute by Act No. 148 of 14 September 2011) represented a ‘revolutionary’ innovation for several reasons (Perulli and Speziale, 2011; Leccese, 2012). It is unprecedented primarily due to its origins: the provision, included in a Decree containing ‘urgent measures for financial stabilisation and economic growth’, was adopted a few days after the ‘secret’ letter sent by the ECB on 5 August 2011, which called on the Italian government to ‘further reform the collective wage bargaining system by allowing enterprise-level agreements to cut wages and working conditions to the specific needs of companies and make these agreements more relevant than other negotiating levels’. It was indeed the first and surely not the last time – given the annual Country Specific Recommendations of the European Semester – that European institutions had exerted such pressure. However, it has to be remembered that Italy, like Spain and Portugal, which have undergone similar structural reforms (Leonardi, 2016), was among those countries ‘afflicted’ by a higher Employment Protection Legislation Index and was also, at the height of the crisis, like Ireland and Greece, particularly weak due to a very high public debt. Hence, ‘intrusive’ measures could be imposed on countries receiving financial assistance packages, or even merely recommended, as in the Italian case, bringing wage-setting mechanisms and wage policies within the ambit of the EU’s economic governance regime (Bordogna and Pedersini, 2015). This eroded not only national sovereignty but also the role and consensus of trade unions, which until then had been involved in forms of social concertation or social dialogue with national governments.
On the strength of the ECB’s prompting, and regardless of the social partners’ recent revision of June 2011 (see below, Section ‘Is there still a need for collective bargaining?’) the Berlusconi government intervened unilaterally in the collective bargaining system with a provision that was smartly presented as a way to ‘support’ proximity bargaining (bargaining at local and company level). Its goal is to produce a binding effect on all workers affected by ‘specific arrangements’ in the context of ‘collective agreements signed by the most representative trade unions at national or local level and by representative structures at company level’ representing the majority of workers, provided that the agreements are aimed at increasing the level or quality of employment, adopting forms of employee participation, declaring undeclared irregular work, increasing competitiveness and wages, managing business and employment crises, making investments and starting new activities (Article 8, paragraph 1). Article 8 also provides that the said agreements, whose topics are quite broad in scope and concern various aspects of work and organisation of production (paragraph 2), 3 can deviate from the law and the regulations set at industry level, subject only to compliance with the Constitution and with the constraints deriving from EU legislation and international labour conventions (paragraph 2-bis).
It is clear that this provision has had a strong impact on Italian industrial relations, in at least three respects: (i) for the first time, a legal mechanism was brought into being to ensure that local and company agreements are generally binding, based on the model laid down by Article 39 of the Italian Constitution, which has yet to be implemented; (ii) albeit within the described framework and conditions, second-level bargaining is determined to prevail (more importantly, derogate) over industry-wide bargaining, regardless of what has already been set between the two levels, and also over legal regulations; (iii) the majority principle, as a validation of proximity bargaining, is identified as the means of consensus management and inhibition of relevant (legal) dissent among workers and other trade unions, particularly with respect to the widespread phenomenon of so-called ‘separate agreements’, which are not signed by all three major confederations or their affiliates.
Article 8 thus drafted a collective bargaining model that can be described as ‘disorganised decentralisation’, 4 not bound to show compliance with national rules and therefore highly competitive with them, to the point of undermining labour law cornerstones such as equal treatment and employee favourability. There is a widespread consensus among scholars that the legislative decision was not dictated solely by a desire to combat delocalisation and boost national productivity in the face of the international crisis of 2008. Proximity bargaining rather appears to be the culmination, at least until then, of a progressive and inexorable assimilation into the political arena of business demands to be able to opt out of (the majority of) legal and collective bargaining obligations, shifting the locus of conflict and its regulation within the company and making sure that the balance – achieved from starting positions certainly more favourable for the enterprise – cannot be questioned by dissident workers/unions or, worse, subverted by judicial decision (Leccese, 2012).
As a generalisation and institutionalisation of the Fiat case, 5 the rule is also imbued with the now dominant idea that collective bargaining, particularly at industry level, represents a ‘tax’ imposed on business (Hirsch, 2007), a cumbersome factor of rigidity. As it stands, it amounts to legal recognition of companies’ ‘pursuit of profit’ (Streeck, 2014), which, paradoxically, political power has helped to develop with little restriction. The only opportunity to exert broad administrative and judicial control was granted by the requirement of filing at the Direzione territoriale del lavoro (DTL, Territorial Department of Labour) as a condition of validity (Article 9, paragraph 4, Decree Law No. 76 of 2 June 2013). However, this provision had a very short life, being promptly repealed, fuelling suspicions that this was done to enable companies to take advantage of a lawful ‘clandestine’ status (Imberti, 2013).
This approach has been translated, if not into a direct transition, given the exceptional nature of Article 8, certainly into the endorsement of a change of collective bargaining’s regulatory axis, from multi-employer bargaining, whose function has always been recognised as keeping business competition within limits and guaranteeing industrial order, to the less cumulative and more contentious single-employer bargaining. This perspective, albeit in a less radical way than in other European countries, finally seems to have received solid legal foundations in Italy.
The practical implementation of the 2011 reform has shown that the corporatisation of collective bargaining suggested by the Italian legislator was perhaps too aggressive to be widely disseminated. 6 It had the rather unsurprising effect, on the one hand, of strengthening a temporary convergence of interests among the three main union confederations, and, then, of getting the social partners (Confindustria, CGIL, CISL and UIL) to find a way of defusing the norm’s dangerous potential, thanks to the commitment undertaken in the Postilla of 21 September 2011 to follow exclusively the intersectoral agreement signed only a few months earlier. It must also be noted that the proximity bargaining model was far from sufficiently accurate in its formulation, as the majority principle is laid down but left unexplained. Nevertheless, it has clearly marked a legislative trend, common thereafter to both centre-right and centre-left governments, in conceiving labour relations as functioning not only (and not so much) as a contingent response to the crisis but in line with primary corporate interests.
Despite numerous subsequent regulatory actions and their implied ambition to redefine Italian industrial relations, Article 8, although outdated, can certainly not be considered repealed. It is a Pandora’s box that remains (almost) unlocked (Perulli and Speziale, 2011), but which is still available as a convenient exit strategy for companies craving self-regulatory work relationships.
This picture did not change under the more ambitious Renzi government (in office between February 2014 and December 2016), whose legislative measures – collectively known as the Jobs Act – were inspired by a desire to comply with and apply, albeit in a very Italian way, the European flexicurity model (Mariucci, 2015). Nonetheless, the approach is subtler, avoiding the frontal attack of Article 8 but still aiming for decentralisation and furthermore pressing for an overall downgrading of collective bargaining.
Evidence of this shift can be traced to the new government’s first legislative reform, the new regulation of fixed-term contracts (Decree-law No. 34 of 20 March 2014, converted into statute by Act No. 78 of 16 May 2014), which traded its liberalisation with the introduction – besides the already existing temporary limit (36 months) – of a quantitative limit (20 per cent of employees with indefinite contracts in force with the employer) operating ‘without prejudice’ to the percentages set by collective agreements. Trade unions unexpectedly find themselves in competition with, if not the accelerator of, the legal benchmark.
Even more defined and incisive is the path taken by Law No. 183 of 10 December 2014 – containing the Parliamentary authorisation for the government to bring about the most extensive and organic reshaping of the labour market legal framework Italy has ever known 7 – and the eight decrees that implemented the Jobs Act in 2015, in terms of both the method that led to its approval and the space left to collective bargaining.
As for the first perspective, it signalled the end point of a process of disintermediation or even exclusion of the trade unions, which are now deemed – rightly or wrongly – less and less capable of effective representation of workers’ interests. The government labour law reforms henceforth will be imposed, and not coordinated, as part of a bigger structural agenda (constitutional, administrative, fiscal), considered necessary to ensure the political and economic stability required by EU institutions. 8
As for the second perspective, the reform has seemed intent on downgrading the role of collective bargaining; it exceeds the limits and the scope of this article to assess every topic affected but, as Table 1 shows with regard to the key issues, collective bargaining has been forced into a narrow – and potentially undermining – corridor, facing, on the one hand, the risk of legal substitution and on the other, more conflict with deregulation via individual agreements.
The impact of Jobs Act reforms on the balance between the law and collective bargaining.
Among all the new provisions, Article 51, Legislative Decree No. 81 of 15 June 2015, stands out. Although introduced as part of the reordering of flexible work contracts and their regulation under collective bargaining, it has rapidly acquired paradigmatic status 9 and is symptomatic of the government’s approach: as a definition of collective bargaining for legal purposes, the norm in fact provides not only a clear representation of bargaining levels (national, territorial, local) but also selection of the negotiating parties (‘the comparatively most representative trade unions at national level and their territorial and workplace representatives’). The real distinguishing feature, however, is the fact that the provision, behind its apparently limited scope (‘unless otherwise provided’), hides a clear reformist intent that brings the progressive corporatisation of labour relations full circle, as in just over a decade the Italian legal framework has gone from questioning the central role of industry-wide collective bargaining to considering it of equal value to those of the company and plant.
Compared with the provision on proximity bargaining, the 2015 model outlined takes one step backwards and one to the side. By avoiding any reference to the ultra partes effectiveness of second-level bargaining and its primacy over the first level, it appears, in fact, less confrontational; however, it proves to be no less ‘interfering’, unlimited in its scope and disengaged from the aims of Article 8. The emergency trait of proximity bargaining thus gives way to the perspective of an entirely new industrial relations scenario, with two important caveats.
The first caveat concerns the meaning of the ‘fungibility’ of contractual levels. The Italian legislator does not appear at all concerned about the possibility of superimposition and duplication of contractual regulations, and provides no explicit indication on the subject of collective bargaining coordination. If the different levels are considered free in any hierarchical relationship, the resulting (and inevitable) decentralisation will be organised more or less in accordance with the framework established by the social partners. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the norm has been interpreted by some as implicitly bound to the current industrial relations self-regulation, as a means of avoiding contradictions and implosions (Mainardi, 2016).
A more careful reading of Article 51 shows that, as the collective agreements are mentioned exclusively in accordance with their geographical relevance but oblivious to any internal articulation, they are not only interchangeable but also (potentially) mutually exclusive. That is to say that the 2015 reform takes into account the assumption that company-level bargaining may not be second-level bargaining, inasmuch as ‘national’ bargaining does not necessarily mean ‘industry-wide’: there is no obligation to implement a contractual system that may comprise multiple levels through all (or most) of them (Gargiulo, 2016).
These considerations can pave the way to a legitimate hypothesis: behind the numerous references to it in the law, collective bargaining is given less consideration in the traditional and autonomous process of valuing and regulating the interests involved, and more with regard to its ability further to loosen already flexible statutory rules. Trade union (and employers’ association) representativeness or the risk of separate agreements, even in such an important and complex reform, remain of no concern to the legislator. Nevertheless, the Jobs Act paves the way for a multi-level approach to complying with the legal requirement of regulation through collective bargaining. The emerging trend seems to show that collective bargaining is conceived as subsidiary and instrumental to companies’ interests, in the same way as the most recent legislative measures have provided for contribution and tax incentives for performance-based wages and occupational welfare measures set by second-level bargaining. 10 The virtuous exchange between wages and productivity does not appear functional with regard to the development and consolidation of collective bargaining, but only with regard to boosting company competitiveness, ultimately centred on technical and production business strategies (Cella, 2013; Campanella, 2014). In this perspective, it is at the company and plant level that the employer’s interests can more easily be fulfilled, because collective bargaining is more vulnerable to company ‘pressure’. Ultimately, however, legally endorsed agreements offer more flexibility and a reduction in labour costs, a model that could not be more distant from the economic and social purposes of collective bargaining and trade unionism itself. It may be reasonable to conclude that we have entered a new phase, neither pro- nor anti-union, but ‘a-union’.
The response of the social partners through the intersectoral framework agreements of 2014/2015: a sign of surrender or resilience?
Faced with major changes, the social partners’ response has for some time appeared weak and delayed. Although the need for a re-evaluation of the industrial relations and collective bargaining system had been suggested since 1998, five years after the Protocol of 23 July 1993 – the first framework agreement to establish the basic rules for collective bargaining and workplace representation with the considerable backing of the government, signs of reform of the collective bargaining structure were registered only in 2009 (Accordo Interconfederale of 22 January 2009), albeit with an explicitly experimental formula and not without splits among various confederations, 11 as for the first time it opened up to ‘opt-out’ clauses at company level. It took the combined pressure of the launch of an alternative first-level company agreement model by Fiat and the direct ‘invasion’ of proximity bargaining legislation later on to alter the industrial relations climate and push for a debate on the acceleration of the reviewing process that could answer the pressing demands for bargaining decentralisation and yet be able to provide the system with certainty and stability. As early as 28 June 2011, an agreement on trade union representativeness and collective bargaining between the main employers’ association, Confindustria, and the three main trade unions – thus healing the split of 2009 – signalled a new era in Italian industrial relations. Collective autonomy tendencies were implemented by following intersectoral collective agreements (often overlooked in Italian legislation and certainly disadvantaged in the current climate), emerging, from 2014, in texts often termed Testo Unico (Consolidated Text), signifying an arduous process (Laforgia, 2014), developed through the introduction of precise measuring and certification of representation for sector-level bargaining, (revised) regulation of workplace representation, the effectiveness of second-level collective bargaining and also the provision of cool-down procedures – through arbitration at intersectoral level to be decided within 10 days – and sanctions for non-compliance. As a matter of fact, this was the new basic agreement for all the partners involved.
The first text to comply with the reform measures was the Testo Unico sulla rappresentanza Confindustria of 10 January 2014, followed, among others, by the Testo Unico sulla rappresentanza Confservizi of 10 February 2014, Accordo Interconfederale AGCI, Confcooperative, Legacoop of 28 July 2015, Accordo Interconfederale Confcommercio of 26 November 2015 and Accordo Interconfederale Confartigianato imprese, CNA, Casartigiani, CLAAI of 23 November 2016. 12 The spread of this type of framework agreement indisputably demonstrates the opportunity for and utility of replicating the same model in different sectors, with a view to monitoring (single employers and other unions) centrifugal forces. At present only some industrial SMEs and the service sector, as well as banking and insurance, are outside this regulatory model.
Despite some (often important) regulatory differences, all these agreements share two common traits, taking up the two-tier collective bargaining system and the choice of a clearer decentralisation, ‘coordinated from the centre’ (Bellardi, 2014, 2016).
The framework is based first of all on the identification of a specific rate of trade union representativeness, not only for the purpose of entitlement to negotiate – 5 per cent for the national and sectoral level of bargaining 13 – but also with regard to whether the resulting collective agreements are binding, thanks to widespread use of the majority principle (collective agreements by trade unions with representativeness of at least 50 per cent plus one are binding for all the signatory parties and apply to all workers; the same principle applies to second-level agreements).
At the same time, the social partners require more direct involvement of the workers, pursued, on the one hand, by reviewing the set-up and competence of the rappresentanza sindacale unitaria (RSU), the workplace representation voted by all workers, with a view to more pronounced autonomy; and on the other hand by the institutionalisation of consultation procedures on the validity of the national collective agreement 14 and direct consent verification for company collective agreements when signed by unelected representatives (rappresentanze sindacali aziendali, RSA). 15 This ensures the binding nature of collective agreements, the certainty of their application and the management of the (workers or unions) minority, enforced thanks to the aforementioned cool-down procedures and sanctions.
Such rigour in the enforceability of collective agreements is obviously counterbalanced by a re-evaluation of the articulation of sectoral and decentralised bargaining – aimed at better suiting ‘the needs of specific production contexts’ – by authorising, within the limits and procedures laid down in the sectoral agreement, strumenti di articolazione contrattuale (means of contractual articulation), on paper a more judicious version of the 2009 opt-out clauses. As a transitional measure, pending implementation of the new model and the first collective agreements signed by the trade unions entitled to do so under new rules of representation, the intersectoral framework offers a broad possibility of exemption from CCNL. It also contains the topics of work obligations, working hours and workplace organisation with a view to governing crisis situations or facilitating the economic and employment development of a territory or of individual companies, but always ‘in agreement’ with national or local trade union representatives. Level coordination is maintained by the sectoral collective agreement also with regard to remuneration. This guarantees homogeneous economic conditions and is responsible for adjustments to the inflation rate and the definition of the so-called elemento economico di garanzia, a fixed sum for those not covered by a second-level contract. The latter is called on to increase productivity and wages through better utilisation of the factors of production and the improvement of work organisation. 16
The social partners’ responses can be differentiated in terms of a glass half full versus a glass half empty approach. To some this is ‘a kind of protective umbrella that cannot avoid differentiations and divisions, but that […] makes it possible, in case of division, to control further damage and excessive splitting’ (Carrieri and Pirro, 2016); for others it offers a completely new way to pursue solidarity between workers, realistically taking the changed environment into account (Liso, 2012).
We can only remark that the reformed industrial relations and collective bargaining model represent a case of resilience rather than surrender. The dissemination and reiteration of the scheme even in economic sectors that have not gone through the same traumatic experience as metalworking demonstrates a will and a skill to respond not only to the pressures from within the industry but also from the legislation, thus maintaining and asserting a traditional multi-level structure. While the law is rethinking the role of collective bargaining with – as we have seen, limited – care for its outcome rather than the place in which it is achieved, workers’ and employers’ representatives reaffirm the leading role of the sectoral-level contract. Furthermore, the self-regulation option is in a well-established tradition of agreements making provision for derogation in order to cope with crisis situations: to allow this possibility within a framework of recognised and shared rules is not only an occasion to exert control over, but also to preserve and respect the system.
Many problems, nonetheless, remain unresolved.
From an ‘internal’ viewpoint, first of all, the system continues to exist on a voluntary basis, binding only the signatory parties; the Fiat case demonstrated its vulnerability and, although isolated, recurred even in relations between employers’ federations and their affiliation to their respective confederations. 17
Moreover, the provisions aimed at preventing unilateral action and cooling down conflicts sanction behaviour through fines or even the suspension of contractual trade union rights, without, however, removing the effects (for example, replacing the unauthorised company-level contractual clause).
Similarly, the overcoming of the previously enforced ‘non-repeatability’ clause in second-level bargaining opens up the possibility that the same topic may be bargained again at the company level, especially in the face of a legal reference that does not distinguish between industry and company collective bargaining; this would result in perfectly legitimate but overlapping regulations, conflicting with the much sought-after governance and overall coordination.
There is, however, one final, key issue: the limited spread of company-level collective bargaining. Given the pronounced dualism between large and small firms in the fabric of the Italian economy – in which small companies are numerically more prevalent and their average size (in terms of employees) does not require the legal recognition of workers’ representation 18 – this is unlikely to change anytime soon (Leonardi, 2016). It is an issue that any bargaining structure has to face: for the model to be effective, decentralised collective bargaining has to achieve coverage rates at least comparable to those of sectoral bargaining (Bellardi, 2016).
Is there still a need for collective bargaining? Epilogue or prologue?
Analysis of the choices made by the legislation and the social partners shows that, while on the same journey, they are moving in parallel and potentially divergent lanes. These reforms are all too recent to enable us to assess their actual impact and mutual interference, but in some cases they already seem outdated as the bureaucratic implementation of intersectoral agreements remains sluggish and a majority of industry-wide collective agreements that expired between 2014 and 2016 have faced renewal outside these provisions. This indicates a period of extreme confusion for Italian industrial relations.
What is certain, however, is that the ‘corporatisation’ of industrial relations is far from an accurate description of collective bargaining in Italy. Due to cultural legacies (a traditional managerial distrust of trade unions, together with the fact that most companies are still family owned) and organisational decisions (the legal recognition of workers’ representation only in companies with more than 15 employees), company-level agreements continue to affect a limited number of companies. At the same time, some recent renewals, such as CCNL Industria Chimica (chemical industry), signed on 15 October 2015, indicate the increasing weakening of sectoral collective agreements with regard to their fundamental function of wage determination (Bellardi, 2016), as employees are entitled to wage increases in line with the trend of the expected (rather than actual) Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP), excluding the effect of imported energy products.
At this point, it must appear appropriate to wonder what the future holds for collective bargaining, given that ‘the change of the contractual structure, and its functions, if not also its nature is still creeping ahead’ (Cella, 2016).
The thread that unites almost all reflections on this topic is the need – given the ongoing vulnerability of an industrial relations system which exists ‘outside’ the law – for political intervention, called for within the framework of various schemes and solutions (Scarponi, 2016), but also by the main three trade unions in a recent joint document. 19 It is clear that, although in the current political landscape an act on trade union representativeness and collective bargaining structures remains far-fetched, no intervention could be envisaged without a new beginning for tripartite concertation practices, in order to avoid another ‘invasion’ such as Article 8 of Decree-law No. 138/2011.
In the meantime, there are some interesting signs of change among the social partners.
The first evidence comes from a prospective review of trade union representative bodies and, more widely, of employee representation. It is remarkable that the aforementioned confederations’ joint document speaks in favour of more inclusive collective bargaining and, to this end, suggests ‘representing and protecting all forms of employment contracts in the workplace, overcoming divisions between better protected and more precarious jobs’ and not only reviewing the role of RSA/RSU, but also enhancing direct mechanisms for workers’ participation. The argument is not new among trade union representatives, compelled by the exponential increase in the number of temporary workers, ‘self-employed’ (but economically dependent) workers and ‘new generation’ employees (for example, ‘smart workers’). However, for the first time it is underlain by an organic understanding of the established forms of worker representation, which are now being questioned with regard to their structure and function (Alaimo, 2016). A bottom-up overhaul of worker representation would more than likely contribute to an overall revitalisation of trade unions and lead, moreover, to a more stable industrial relations system.
A second element is a prospective review of the articulation of collective bargaining. Again, the Confederations’ document points in two directions: (i) overcoming the conflict between controlled and disorganised decentralisation (‘the national industry-level agreement must maintain its primary function of commonly regulating labour relations…national agreements will establish guidelines for the development of second-level agreements, taking on a new and broader remit in defining the rules for devolution’) and (ii) a multi-dimensional vision of second-level bargaining that does not correspond exclusively to company level – here, interestingly, augmented by suitable connections with transnational bargaining for companies of the relevant size – but also the territorial, district and supply chain levels. It is undoubtedly a step forward and one that takes the (small) size of most Italian companies into account. Furthermore, it can be developed with judicious use of network bargaining (Article 3, paragraph 4-ter, Law No. 33 of 9 April 2009) which, located between company and territorial level (Bavaro and Laforgia, 2015) and potentially cutting across different sectors, entails specific rules and guarantees. Development along such lines would not be easy, but ultimately it is likely to lead, among other beneficial effects, to a rethink of employers’ representation, including its structure and functions. This is a hitherto neglected issue which should finally be given the attention it deserves (Feltrin and Zan, 2014).
The contents of some of the most recent agreements are also positive. First, there are trends of inclusivity, overcoming fragmentation between old and new jobs, typical and atypical workers. Such trends can be found in (company and territorial) agreements that extend, for example, union rights to ‘self-employed’ and precarious workers in the workplace, or define rules for the transformation of fixed-term contracts into indefinite contracts, or introduce fair employment contracts. Inclusivity can also be traced in the (sectoral) dissemination of bilaterality, as well as local and corporate welfare, and more recently in widespread regulation of ‘self-employed’ work coordinated by an employer (Garofalo, 2016; Voza, 2016). Lastly, the Jobs Act instigated the dismantling of some workers’ rights, such as reinstatement in the case of unfair dismissal, giving way to a number of ‘old-fashioned’ agreements that introduce protection standards, equivalent to what was previously provided for by law (Gargiulo, 2016).
Although not the only (or necessarily prevailing) development trends, they nonetheless indicate a certain vibrancy in collective bargaining, which is expanding its scope to encompass so-called outsiders or rediscovering the wider meaning of derogation (potentially giving Article 8 a completely new spin). The key word with regard to these trends is coordination, with sectoral and territorial and company bargaining complementing one another. In this sense, the aforementioned Confederations’ document enjoys some convergence with the position of the employers’ organisations, putting the spotlight on the subjects of collective bargaining, identifying a ‘high road’ to competitiveness, based on research, training, investments and innovation. 20 But such a high road cannot be taken without consensus building and mutually recognised and binding rules. 21
As a result, signs of vitality have been seen lately even at the industry level, namely in the 26 November 2016 renewal of the CCNL Industria Metalmeccanica (metalworking industry agreement), traditionally the leading collective agreement and touchstone of the others. It represents a re-establishment of relations between the main trade unions and the employers’ association Federmeccanica, in which the majority principle stated in the 2014 Testo Unico is replaced by unanimity (for the first time in more than 15 years), rendering the agreement binding. The focus is on training, as well as wage increases, although it pushes further in the direction of company-level bargaining.
It is perhaps here that we can find the answer to the question of whether collective bargaining is needed. Cutting labour costs, which was pursued in Italy well before the 2008 economic downturn, among other things through widespread use of flexible work contracts and wage moderation in the guise of ‘employment insurance’, has not really improved the competitiveness of the Italian economy or its high unemployment and low employment rates. On the contrary, it has increased in-work poverty, not only for individual workers, but also, more worryingly, on a family basis (Saraceno, 2015); it has also increased territorial, gender and age disparities. Perhaps not too late, Italian trade unionism – which for many years was considered doomed and left out in the cold as a policy-making partner for over a decade, at the behest of supranational institutions, taking as excuse the economic and financial crisis – has shown a durable capacity to represent employees and expand collective bargaining coverage. The real challenge is to improve collective bargaining quality, not just quantity, in the knowledge that a complete dissolution of the multi-employer system would end up not only excluding a large proportion of workers but also marginalise employers’ associations. Recovery of the trade unions’ negotiating role will inevitably revive their role as policy-making partners, forcing the state to reconsider the recent trend towards ‘a-unionism’ and to enhance the role of the social partners and boost industrial relations, while also recognising and harnessing the sense of urgency that has emerged with regard to policy reorientation at EU level.
Ultimately, this is a conflict between social dignity and market competition. And that is an old story.
Footnotes
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.