As the economic crisis increasingly plunges masses of workers, both male
and female, and younger generations into precariousness and poverty, thecorporate and class-collaborationist logic is advancing. The final piece
of the puzzle is the Senate's final approval of the worker participation
law proposed by the CISL. With the Senate's approval, the popular
initiative promoted by the CISL, "Participation in Work," has been
enacted into law. The initiative had gathered approximately 400,000
signatures for a regulation implementing Article 46 of the Constitution,
which establishes workers' right to active involvement in the life and
profits of businesses. (1)
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni had already expressed her support for the
law, calling at the CISL national assembly for the allocation of EUR72
million in the 2025 Budget Law to cover tax incentives for employees,
making worker economic and financial participation more attractive.
According to the new leader of the CISL, Daniela Fumarola, "a historic
page is being written for the world of work and for Italy. After 77
years, Article 46 of the Constitution is finally being implemented
thanks to a two-year mobilization." (2)
Let's briefly review the key aspects of the new legislation. Economic
and financial participation is provided for private sector employees
only, and a transitional change is envisaged in the rules governing the
substitute tax on personal income tax and regional and municipal
surtaxes, as well as on remuneration consisting of performance bonuses
and forms of corporate profit-sharing.
For 2025, the total amount to which the substitute tax applies will be
raised from EUR3,000 to EUR5,000 gross, in the event of the distribution
to employees of a share of corporate profits no less than 10% of total
profits, pursuant to collective, company, or territorial agreements.
To apply the substitute tax regime, income from employment must not
exceed EUR80,000 in the year preceding the year in which the emoluments
are received, and the substitute tax rate is 5% until 2027, and 10
percentage points when fully implemented.
Companies may establish employee financial participation plans that can
identify ways for workers to participate in the company's capital
through the purchase of shares, including in lieu of performance
bonuses. In 2025, dividends paid to workers from shares awarded in lieu
of performance bonuses up to EUR1,500 per year are tax-exempt up to 50%.
Regarding management participation, the new rules provide two options.
The first concerns joint-stock companies (or limited partnerships by
shares) organized according to the so-called dualistic model, which
includes a "management board," responsible for managing the company, and
a "supervisory board," responsible for various general and supervisory
tasks.
The company bylaws may provide, if governed by collective bargaining
agreements, for the participation on the supervisory board of one or
more employee representatives, identified on the basis of procedures
defined by the agreements, in compliance with both the professional and
integrity requirements for board members and the provisions regarding
subjective grounds for exclusion from their appointment.
The presence of at least one representative of employees participating
in financial participation plans may also be required.
The second option concerns companies not organized according to the
dualistic model. In this case, the bylaws may provide, where the
situation is regulated by collective bargaining agreements, for the
presence on the board of directors and, where established (based on the
so-called one-tier model), on the board's internal committee (management
control committee), of one or more members representing the interests of
employees and identified by the workers themselves.
Regarding employee participation in organizational matters, companies
may establish joint committees, composed of equal numbers of company and
employee representatives, to develop proposals for improvement and
innovation plans for products, production processes, services, and work
organization.
Companies may also include in their organizational chart, pursuant to
company collective bargaining agreements, representatives for training,
welfare plans, compensation policies, and workplace quality. Companies
with fewer than 35 employees can promote forms of worker participation
in company organization, including through bilateral bodies.
Finally, worker participation is consultative, which occurs through the
expression of opinions and proposals on the merits of decisions the
company intends to make. Within joint committees, the unitary union
representatives or company union representatives, or, in their absence,
the worker representatives and the local structures of sectoral
bilateral bodies, can be consulted in advance on company decisions.
The National Permanent Commission for Worker Participation is
established at the National Council of Labour (CNEL). The Commission
issues non-binding interpretative opinions on procedures relating to
worker participation (proposing any corrective measures to the joint
bodies), collects and promotes best practices (in terms of worker
participation) implemented by companies, prepares a biennial report on
worker participation in the workplace, and submits proposals to the
National Council of Labour (CNEL) aimed at encouraging worker
participation in companies.
As is evident, the entire philosophy underlying the People's Law
initiative presented by the CISL (Italian Union of Labour and Workers'
Unions) and the resulting law, not coincidentally titled "Provisions for
Worker Participation in the Management, Capital, and Profits of
Enterprises," stems from a firm commitment to an interclass strategy,
entirely internal and subordinate to the capitalist mercantile economic
system, born of an analysis of society that fails to recognize the
inevitable conflict between workers' interests and those of employers,
whether public or private.
A clear desire to break away from a conflict-ridden model, marked and
tied to class struggle between employers and workers' resistance
organizations, is evident. This will develop and foster a collaborative
environment for greater business competitiveness, offering workers the
opportunity to express their views on strategic and management
decisions, contribute to the improvement of products and production
processes, and thus share in economic results, by providing for economic
and financial participation by workers in individual companies.
Nothing new could be said about the culture of social Catholicism of
which the CISL is an expression and offspring, itself born from the
papal encyclical Rerum Novarum, issued in 1891 by Leo XIII, in its firm
condemnation of class struggle and socialism, then in its ascendant
phase, in the tenacious defense of private property, which the election
of the new Pope, Leo XIV, inevitably re-evoked.
What is most surprising, therefore, is not so much the CISL's
corporatist approach, adopted by the governing parties (and it could not
have been otherwise), but the declared abstention of the Democratic
Party group and, above all, the reasons for this abstention, stated in
the Senate chamber by the former Secretary of the CGIL, Susanna Camusso.
For her, the motivation for abstention stems, for the most part, from
the exclusion of public administration workers and the employers'
discretion to establish joint committees with worker representatives, as
well as the exclusive possibility of financial participation by workers,
with respect to actual "governance."
In her statement of vote, the senator even goes so far as to state that
the final outcome of the discussion, and therefore the law subsequently
approved, represents a betrayal of a "very interesting and important
text" (3), justifying the senators' vote of abstention precisely by "the
betrayed origin of this law" (sic!). She goes so far as to state,
without grasping the involuntary schizophrenia, that the text of this
law would actually be backward compared to the inter-union agreement
made with the counterparts in 2018, the "Factory Pact", which not
coincidentally represents the crowbar with which, to this day,
Federmeccanica and Assistal, the two employers' associations, are not
signing the hypothesis of a new contract for the largest category of
workers, metalworkers.
The inadequacy of the CGIL's own trade union political strategy is
evident here, albeit stated by a proxy, but reiterated and confirmed
several times in its official and congressional documents, relating to a
vague and never organically defined as "codetermination," effectively
flirting with, if not overlapping with, the very conclusions of the CISL
and the current law approved by Parliament.
In this context, the real situation of our class has greatly worsened
and profoundly deteriorated. ISTAT's recent annual report confirmed that
between 2019 and 2024, contractual wages lost 10.5% of their purchasing
power, due to sharp price increases.
The decline in purchasing power was particularly marked at the end of
2022, when it reached 15%, before easing in 2023 and rising to 10% in
March 2025. Actual gross wages per employee, which take into account
company and individual agreements, also suffered a loss, albeit a more
modest one, of 4.4%. This loss of purchasing power has had significant
repercussions on Italy's social fabric. The phenomenon of the "working
poor," or people who, despite working, fall into absolute poverty, is
growing. Between 2014 and 2023, the incidence of absolute individual
poverty among employed people rose from 4.9% to 7.6%, with a more rapid
increase among blue-collar workers, from just under 9% to 14.6%.
As can be seen from the table below, 6.2 million (35.7%) private sector
employees earned a salary of less than EUR15,000 gross per year in 2023,
earning, at best, EUR1,000 net per month. Overall, workers earning less
than EUR25,000 gross per year account for approximately 10.9 million
employees (62.7%). This means that net salaries, at most, do not exceed
EUR1,400-EUR1,500 per month. (4)
Table 1 - Number of private sector employees
(excluding agriculture and domestic services) and percentage incidence
by gross annual salary class (in euros), 2023
Source: CGIL Economics Office based on INPS data
Furthermore, workers with fixed-term and part-time contracts have
average gross annual salaries of 10.3 thousand and 11.8 thousand euros,
respectively. Workers who combine both conditions see their average
gross annual salary further reduced to 7.1 thousand euros.
Table 2 - Average annual gross wage (in euros) in the private sector
(excluding agriculture and domestic services) by contract type and
working hours, 2023
Source: CGIL Economics Office based on INPS data
Other factors that determine low wages are the high incidence of
low-skilled workers in the Italian labor market, more than 3% higher
than the European average, and the significant employment instability.
Suffice it to say that 83.5% of all terminated employment relationships
lasted less than a year, 51% of which lasted up to ninety days.
Furthermore, approximately 2.8 million employees earn an hourly wage of
less than 9.5 euros gross.
Despite these data, further supported by CGIL studies, which highlight
the urgent need for a widespread wage battle and the overcoming of all
regulations that facilitate precarious employment and thus the blackmail
of workers, the leadership still lacks the will to unify the wage
battle, with the result that a large portion of national contracts have
yet to be finalized. Such as those in healthcare, as well as school
workers, who are still waiting for the 2022/2024 contract to be
finalized, while those that have been finalized and closed vary
according to their strategic position in the production process, ranging
from the 435 euros currently paid to bank workers, to the 220 euros paid
to retail workers, which also closed last year after missing almost two
three-year contracts since 2019, to the pennies paid to security
workers, to the 230 euros paid to railway workers, who have recently
closed their contracts but whose contracts expired in 2023, to those in
central public sector employment for the three-year period 2022/2024 for
a 165 euro increase, which, despite not having been signed by the CGIL,
remains valid for approval by the CISL and the independent unions.
As with other agreements still pending, such as the politically
significant one for metalworkers, with a currently joint demand from
Fiom Fim and Uilm of EUR280, the finalization of which is not yet in
sight, given the wall Federmeccanica has erected against union demands.
In this sector too, the risk of debacle and fragmentation is real. In
our opinion, two circumstances could arise, which, given the timeframe
for this magazine, we will address in the September issue.
A resounding defeat in the referendum campaign on June 8th and 9th on
the questions put forward by the CGIL would represent a further defeat
for the working masses, leading to a further shift in the balance of
power between the government, employers, and the labor movement in favor
of the former two. This would predictably result in the employers'
associations completely rejecting the proposed figures and a contract
renewal that could protect the purchasing power of over 1.5 million
metalworkers. Or a further regulatory and wage fragmentation of the
category, as sectors and industries with significant profits, such as
Leonardo with its arms sales, push to terminate the contract, eager to
"calm" strikes and overtime bans. This is in contrast to small and
medium-sized mechanical engineering companies, as well as the entire
automotive sector, which have long been in crisis and are unwilling to
give in to union demands.
These trends combined could be highly dangerous for the maintenance of
solidarity within the same category and, consequently, for the entire
labor movement.
For this reason, after analyzing the referendum results, which we have
partially addressed in the editorial, a thorough and frank discussion
among workers, delegates, and within the Chambers of Labor themselves
will be necessary to resume, next autumn, a clearer and more defined
strategy that meets the needs of the class struggle, the real conditions
of our class, today.
The conclusion of the study itself, from which we have drawn some data
and tables, does not seem auspicious: "Only through a shared commitment
between institutions, businesses, and social partners will it be
possible to restore confidence and purchasing power to Italian workers."
This brings us back, like a grueling game of snakes and ladders, where
the pawn, at the end of the game, returns to the starting point to begin
a new game, to the initial reflections of these notes.
Cristiano Valente
Notes:
(1) See il CANTIERE no. 18 June 2023 "Between a draft and the original,
in the end you choose the original" by Cristiano Valente and no. 25
April 2024 "The class struggle is over" by Tommaso Santino
(2) Il Sole 24 Ore 14 May 2025 "Final green light from the Senate for
the law on worker participation. From profits to boards of directors:
what changes" by Giorgio Pogliotti
(3) Susanna Camusso - Speech in the Senate (14.05.25) YouTube
(4) "The wage issue and low wages in Italy" Study by the Economics
Office of the national CGIL 24 May 2025
http://alternativalibertaria.fdca.it/
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