WORLD WORLDWIDE ITALY News Journal Update - (en) Italy, UCADI #174 - School, University and Research contract (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 On 13 July, the renewal of the 2019-2021 contract for workers from

schools, universities, research institutions and Afam was signed. Intesa
expects an economic increase of 100-200 euros per month distributed in
different ways. ATA staff will receive an extra 97 euros gross, for
teachers 124 euros gross per month and for administrative managers the
increase is equal to 190 euros per month. As far as the school is
concerned, considering the increases already received with the economic
agreement of December 2022 and the additional resources distributed by
the contract, the average salary increase between the various sectors
fluctuates between 5% and 7%". Precarious school workers have obtained
the opportunity to take advantage of 3 days of paid leave as is already
the case for permanent staff. In all sectors, leave is extended for
women victims of violence. The contract for university and research will
be discussed later.
The contract arrives, as never is the practice - how to say - in the
final balance, when it has already expired. This salary intervention
does not greatly improve the salaries of Italian teachers whose average
gross salary (30,784 euros) exceeds Italy's per capita GDP (30,040
euros) by only 2.5 per cent, while in the Eurozone the average salary (
44,408 euros) exceeds the per capita GDP (35,850 euros) by 23.9 per
cent. This places the salaries of Italian teachers among the lowest on
the continent and makes them the worst paid.
During the negotiations, the ministerial counterpart managed to pass its
long-term line tending towards a diversification of careers within the
teaching staff and ATA staff, a trend shared by many of the trade union
organizations at the negotiating table and seen as the only solution to
obtain, at least for a part of the category, more robust salary
increases. In this same logic, the transposition at contractual level of
the functions of the tutor teacher and guidance teacher - figures wanted
by the Minister - must be seen, which will allow the principle of
personalization of education to be affirmed, in the direction of a
growing differentiation of the teaching role and of the category
hierarchy. Masked behind the pursuit of excellence, the new policy of
the Ministry of Education and of so-called merit sets out with
difficulty to find the tools through which to modify the structure of
public schools, making it increasingly classy and distinguishing between
pilot institutes, institutes of excellence and ordinary institutes that
collect the mass of students. It is in this perspective that the
strengthening of the technical institutes must be placed, ostensibly to
respond to the needs emerging from the labor market, and on the other
hand the institution of the institutes of excellence and ordinary
institutes that gather the mass of students. It is in this perspective
that the strengthening of the technical institutes must be placed,
ostensibly to respond to the needs emerging from the labor market, and
on the other hand the institution of the institutes of excellence and
ordinary institutes that gather the mass of students. It is in this
perspective that the strengthening of the technical institutes must be
placed, ostensibly to respond to the needs emerging from the labor
market, and on the other hand the institution of the so-called made in
Italy high school, of which the advertising intent with respect to
government policies is understood.
This contract, which intervenes after the decidedly shocking experience
of the pandemic and the massive use of distance learning, could not fail
to take this aspect into account, but did so in the most reductive way
possible, regulating its use without affecting the cultural contents in
the slightest. the substance is not the methodological and pedagogical
characteristics of the use of this teaching tool. Given the usefulness
of the emergency use of distance learning in pandemic situations, the
experience gained in these two years should have been taken into account
and finally made a leap in quality, taking into account the fact that
despite the teachers had to these years they have increased their IT
knowledge, approached the use of telematic tools, but they have done it
with good results willingness and without the support of an adequate
didactic methodological discourse that would explain to them the
potential of the medium used and the importance of an interdisciplinary
and comparative teaching method which is certainly possible through the
use of IT and telematic tools, only have an idea and full knowledge of
the potential of the tool used.
It is quite clear that in the pandemic period there was no time to
proceed with a professional adjustment of the personnel, but certainly,
having overcome the emergency moment, this would have been the phase in
which to proceed with a professional adjustment of the personnel which
could have led to the inclusion of telematic tool within ordinary
teaching, as one of the possible tools and certainly not a substitute
for face-to-face teaching, in such a way as to enhance the teaching
skills of both teachers and students: This could also have been an
opportunity to proceed to a general retraining that could have resulted
in substantial salary increases, used as an incentive for professional
updating.
But all this was not and the contract was the ritual repetition of a
tired practice which sees the trade union organizations chasing the
employer's side in the renewal of the contract, in a desperate attempt
to adjust a salary that is always insufficient to the life and work
needs of the teachers, who find themselves living in a condition of
poverty with a consequent impoverishment of the teaching function
deriving from the absence of stimuli to commit themselves and to
improve. Today, if the Italian school survives, it is due to the good
will and sense of duty of the teachers who continue to carry out their
work, allowing the Italian school to carry out its function of cultural
and human integration, an irreplaceable function of social cohesion it's
necessary.
This is the reason why the contract for school workers that has just
been signed must be seen as totally inadequate, as a low-priced
opportunity to intervene on a pivotal institution of Italian society
which greens the opportunities to carry out one's task in a functional
way to the development of Italian society and to the interests of the
country. It should be added that the feared introduction of
differentiated autonomy, with regional management of education, will
only increase the already evident and worrying differences in the
quality and quantity of education provided in the South of the country
compared to the advantaged areas of the North , more and more pressing
and strong and the need for a permanent education is making its way that
allows everyone to adapt to the technological and production innovations
that concern the world of work and the ways in which work is carried out.
In a situation in which the school should be the central point of
intervention for the adaptation of Italian society to new needs, it
remains a sector which - like healthcare - sees a reduction in the
economic allocations necessary for its functioning, the resources, while
the PNRR projects do not show significant signs of investment in this
sector, aimed at improving the service provided to users, also through
the creation of suitable structures to allow adequate levels of
education, providing the technical instruments necessary for a modern
and effective teaching performance. Obviously, we are not referring only
to distance learning, but to access to all the teaching methods and
tools necessary to provide adequate education that is in step with the
times.

The university contract

In this sense and in this perspective, the contract stipulated for
university personnel assumes importance, which concerns its technical
personnel and the unresolved appendix of the professional qualification
of native-speaking readers, an eternal problem for Italian universities
that has been dragging on for decades. This contract tops up in modes
and in logic that of the school and absolutely does not take into
account the differentiated professionalisms that exist in the University
sector and which would require careful reflection, since each University
with its various Departments constitutes a complex world, comparable
from the point of view of work organization to a corporate organization
for specialized departments, where each of them performs an
indispensable function for the production of a unique cultural product,
consisting of the most adequate possible training of the students who
use the facility. At the same time, however, the University is a
research production unit, i.e. a necessary driving force for society,
because in its ambits, in the cultural environment that surrounds it,
the conditions for innovation ripen, which is not only in the scientific
field, but which concerns the entire spectrum of knowledge and research
as a whole and gives the country that dynamic capacity which is
essential today for the development of the economy and the improvement
of living and working conditions for all.
But this goal is too ambitious to be shared by a minister of the
university, dominated by a mediocre, short-sighted minister, blinded by
ideology, a prisoner of outdated research schemes, himself a mediocre
researcher: in the development of the contractual negotiation, the
Minister of University has had no voice and no weight and has not been
able to weigh the specific needs of the sector and even less of
research. It is quite clear that as long as she herself university
professor continues to conceive the stipulation of a sector contract
from which the professors are excluded, i.e. the other "half of the
sky", i.e. those who are employed in the sector, up to then, it will not
make sense to negotiate the working conditions and productivity of the
structure, to find an agreement on the goals to be achieved, achieve
useful objectives for the country and for society. Finally, what can we
say about the contract in the research sector, a true Cinderella of the
sector, which is also characterized by the scattering of researchers'
careers, their distribution on three levels and above all focuses on the
regulation of remote activity. extending this possibility to researchers
e effectively emptying research centres, enhancing individual work to
the detriment of that in work environments where the necessary
confrontation between researchers and between the production and
research sectors reverberates on greater productivity.
For workers in the research sector, more than for other sectors, it is
quite clear that the contract has implemented a barter between access to
remote work and wage increases. The extension of smart working,
presented as a request shared by both employers, effectively reduces the
costs of managing the presence of workers in the workplace, makes the
workforce more manageable because it is parceled out and individualized,
thus benefiting the employers, but at the same time it impoverishes
collective productivity, humiliated and made unproductive, by the
absence of confrontation in a common research environment that no longer
exists but which, on the other hand, allows the worker to manage their
working time quickly and comfortably, decentralized on the territory,

For an overall assessment

These first "hot" considerations on the school, university and research
contract require further in-depth reflections which will be the subject
of our future interventions relating to the effects of what is
established in the agreement with respect to the individual sectors.
These are too important for the development of the country, for its
productive and social organization to be dismissed with a general but
summary analysis of the content of the agreements. Due to their
importance, school, university and research deserve an in-depth study of
the merits of each single provision which is likely to produce
significant effects on teaching as well as on research, on the training
of young people and on that of researchers,

G. C.

http://www.ucadi.org/2023/07/28/contratto-scuola-universita-e-ricerca/
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