The participants at this National Conference noted that for decades the relationship between labor and capital in Italy seems to have swung periodically between the antitheses of cooperation and conflict – of subscribing to a shared mission and engaging in confrontation as a matter of principle. Ranged on one side has been a notion which views a business as a community of men and women intent on achieving shared objectives, and on the other has been a more class-conscious approach, grounded in the competing interests of all the various actors in the labor market. Situated somewhere in the middle has been the State, performing a policy-setting and regulatory role in respect of economic and social processes. Lastly, and serving as the backdrop to all this, is a production system that may be summed up as consisting of two tiers: big business and small- to medium-sized enterprises, each tier without question internally diverse, but characterized by problem areas, industrial relations models and potential that to a large extent can be encapsulated within this two-tiered classification.
The debate over labor market reform in Italy and its effects in terms of restoring national competitiveness and boosting human capital may properly be seen as falling within this framework, which emerged with the onset of the (belated) industrialization of Italy and subsequently took hold in the main following the Second World War. Yet once having placed the debate in its historical and cultural context, it was conceded by those in attendance that – now more than ever – this debate is being shaped by certain factors which are relatively unprecedented, independent and of wide-ranging consequence, namely: globalization, technological advances, the demographic revolution and the global crisis. The latter, in particular, seems to have inexorably changed the face of Western-style capitalism, especially as regards the relationship between growth and employment. As proof of this, the participants pointed to what is currently being seen in the US economy, which, after the shock of the first few years of the crisis has gradually returned to growth, without the increase in GDP being matched however by a corresponding rise in employment levels – or at least, not to the extent anticipated.
For Europe as a whole, still in the midst of the storm that has engulfed the real economy and labor market, and even now grappling with the conundrum of growth, it was felt that this change of scenario suggests the need to rejig the development paradigm hitherto applied. Yet any such adjustments should not be solely aimed at ensuring the sustainability of the welfare State, but also at addressing issues such as business organizational models, the ability to operate in global markets, to innovate products and processes, to train and upskill one’s human capital, and to rethink the role of intermediary bodies in society, the role played by local economic areas, the dynamics of industrial relations, as well as resolving the conceptual confusion between labor “precariousness” and “flexibility”. Put more simply, faced with change and the speed with which it is unfolding, it could prove very dangerous – as well as short-sighted – to assume that once the recession is over everything will return to just as it was before the crisis.
It was suggested that any such short-sightedness would, a fortiori, be damaging to a country such as Italy, which is more exposed than its competitors to the risk of decline, beset as it is has been by stifled growth for over a decade now, and subject to widespread and pervasive phenomena of off-the-books and informal employment, together with little or no social mobility and a longstanding difficulty in attracting foreign investment. Viewed from this perspective, the debate over Italian labor market reform reflects and magnifies both the current global debate on employment and development as well as the critical issues that have historically undermined the country’s economic performance.
Accordingly, it was felt that notwithstanding the objections to Article 18 of the Workers’ Statute, which have dominated the public debate, and regardless of whether the technical detail of the bill currently before parliament is deemed to represent a “breakthrough”, a “compromise”, or a “surrender to a culture of mistrust towards capital“, there is universal consensus regarding one point, namely: that in the face of the extraordinary challenges posed by today’s world, for the Italian labor market to function once again it must no longer persist in the illusion that regulatory reform alone will suffice to resolve all its problems. Instead, there is a fundamental and unavoidable need for acknowledgement that the State and the system as a whole must change their ways – for the better, naturally.