WORLD WORLDWIDE ITALY News Journal Update - (en) Italy, UCADI, #175 - The bosses and the salary. (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 For workers, wages have always been the measure of their remuneration

which should allow, as the Constitution states, a free and dignified
life. Even the popes in their teaching on work affirm the "right of
workers to a fair but moderate wage" (Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum). Today
the bosses are forced to take note of the evidence that the wages they
pay are low to the point of not guaranteeing subsistence. There is
therefore talk of poor work and the adoption of a minimum wage by law is
being proposed by many quarters. Finally, Italy too is faced with this
problem in a particular situation, the right in government and a left
that has always maintained that wage protection should belong to union
bargaining, rather than to the law. In effect, recourse to the law is of
an emergency nature in the face of the inability, today, of trade union
organizations to guarantee a wage sufficient to live in dignity.
Methods parties from the opposition agree to ask the government for a
legislative intervention that they have been unable to develop and have
it tried when they had the opportunity and the majority, the right in
government resists claiming they want to protect wages, fearing that the
The adoption of the minimum wage by law would compress bargaining by
pushing downward wage stagnation, and by offering, as an alternative, a
willingness to intervene on the so-called tax wedge to guarantee an
increase in the payroll of wages which would be purely nominal and in
fact constitute a fraud.

The tax wedge

The tax wedge is made up of a percentage indicator which determines the
ratio between all taxes on labor and the total cost of labour, i.e. that
part of the salary that the entrepreneur subtracts from the salary paid
to the worker to devolve it to the tax authorities as a contribution
deriving from work in general taxation. The cut in the tax wedge,
therefore, is the "tax reduction" paid by employees, who no longer pay
taxes and contributions intended to finance the welfare state and
services and increases the net salary paid to the worker.
At this point it is appropriate to reflect on how the salary is made up
which is made up of the pay paid in the pay slip which takes the name of
direct wage comma and the indirect wage made up of the services that
society as a whole provides to every citizen or free school, national
health service, infrastructures such as roads, bridges and anything else
necessary for the organization of social life, in short, that set of
services that take the name of services.
By reducing the tax contribution received by the state to make the
necessary services available to citizens in good quality and quantity,
obviously the services are reduced so if on the one hand the real wage
paid in the paycheck increases on the other, at the same time, the
indirect wage decreases , i.e. performance and services.
The role of taxes is to redistribute the wealth produced in the form of
benefits for all, allowing the entire community to enjoy goods and
services, which must, or perhaps it should be said, employers should
also contribute and the holders of wealth, through progressive taxation,
implemented according to everyone's possibilities: at least this is what
the Constitution establishes.
In the light of what we have said, it is clear why the bosses prefer and
forcefully ask for the reduction of the tax wedge in order not to
increase wages by increasing the cost of labour, which would be an
expense at their expense. In this way, not only do they save but they
hit precisely that redistributive and solidarity function which is the
priority objective of the tax system adopted by the State to allow
everyone according to their possibilities to contribute to the common
welfare and redistribute wealth.
The real consequence of the reduction of the tax wedge is that everyone
directly becomes the manager of his own poverty, since he will have to
pay for school, pay for health care to guarantee his health, bear the
costs of reaching work, spending on his own and drawing on the salary,
and directly providing for whatever is necessary for everyday life in
the form of goods and services guaranteed today by the State. This is
why the tax wedge operation effectively constitutes a reduction in
wages, to the full benefit of the bosses and the society they want
build. It is no coincidence that the main supporter of this line is
Forza Italia, the employers' party par excellence, which thinks like its
founder that it would be good for everyone to personally manage their
own resources, for example, to ensure their health. And in fact, during
his lifetime, he gave him a splendid example of this, resorting to the
services of San Raffaele, a private hospital for which he was able to
pay for the services in a mummified way, something that the recipients
of wages, albeit enriched by the reduction of the tax wedge, they will
never have the opportunity to be able to guarantee themselves.
It follows that we, ordinary people, would necessarily aspire to have a
health service that works, that guarantees access to everyone, without
having to wait for a service to climb kilometers of waiting lists.
It is on this terrain that the different vision of society between the
right and the left is measured precisely because, proof of this, the de
facto decrease in allocations for healthcare, the non-investments in the
sector of funds of the PNRR, testify to the desire to always bury more
public health to the benefit of private, so that the nominal increase in
salaries will correspond to the need to pay for treatment in the event
of illness. We must realize that what is different between right and
left is the different vision of the world according to which the
weakest, the most disadvantaged, the sick, the one who needs solidarity
and help must solve his problems by himself, perhaps with help by the
charity of this or that Foundation or solidarity association, tools that
often serve exclusively to wash one's conscience and to implement image
operations that are so useful and necessary in a society like the
current one: the society of entertainment where the media and news
broadcasts publicize the
image sharks, exploiters of work.
The dismantling of the welfare state and services is underway and we
must not be deceived by the contingency that the decrease in pupils
makes it possible to make the reduction of resources for education and
school less visible because for those that still manage to function, the
possibility to operate. If the decrease in the number of students due to
the demographic crisis makes it possible to pay fewer teachers and to
reduce the number of classes, we should instead look at the growth in
dropouts and the need to catch up on those who escape schooling, thus
preparing themselves to be expelled from the world of work, reinforcing
areas of social discomfort.

For a class social policy

Finally, the left needs to dialectically explain that the reduction of
the tax wedge is not part of the tools with which it intends to affect
wages, for the reasons we have just explained, but that the wage
intervention tool resides only in the inevitable increase in the cost of
labor for the bosses, and this even if it presents great difficulties,
policies being opposed to operations on the tax wedge, since in any case
an (apparent) increase in the payroll ensues, makes a contrast between
these choices difficult to understand. It would be enough for the left
to undertake to explain the relationship between direct and indirect
wages and above all the exact vision of the functioning of class
relations, of solidarity, the different vision of the well-being of
citizens and of male and female workers.
It is for this reason that, while considering the single wage initiative
worthy, we believe that the strategy to attack the government should be
articulated and enriched with proposals for struggle and areas for
political and social confrontation. Certainly it is necessary for the
opposition to commit itself to tax reform, avoiding generalized flat
taxes in favor of a taxman
progressive in the taxation of wealth, but in doing so, alongside the
commitment to the tax authorities, it is necessary to open a great
reforming season with regard to the provision of services, guaranteeing
their functioning, ensuring certain and rapid times for carrying out the
services, above all as regards health services and waiting lists; it is
necessary to commit oneself to the recovery of school dropouts and to a
greater general efficiency of the provision of personal and collective
services.
Such a season of struggles cannot be separated from a rethinking of the
ways in which to do politics, from a return to workplaces and
neighborhoods, taking into account that with remote working, the
conditions of the workplace have changed and that, therefore, it is
necessary to find new ways in which to relate to workers and organize
them. We must not forget that part of so-called poor work and undeclared
or precarious work, certainly fighting for the stability of the
workplace and against all forms of precariousness, but at the same time
we must not make the mistake of limiting the struggles and interventions
to legal labor market. What needs to be aggressively attacked is the
undeclared labor market and this necessarily means dealing with the
integration of migrants, with their regularisation,
Class unity, solidarity and common struggle, internationalism, still
remain fundamental values of male and female workers which are essential
to the success of social struggles and which allow them to present
themselves to the patronal front always united and united in the defense
of their interests, a common front that is sufficiently united and
capable of exerting the necessary force to obtain at least decent living
and working conditions.

G. L.

http://www.ucadi.org/2023/08/18/i-padroni-e-il-salario/
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