Premier Matteo Renzi came under
fire Monday for delaying changes to a controversial and
unpopular 2011 pension reform to allow people to retire earlier
on lower pensions.
The criticism came as the Italian cabinet started looking
at the 2016 budget bill, which Renzi said it would launch on
Thursday.
Susanna Camusso, the leader of Italy's largest trade union
federation CGIL, said that Renzi was wrong to delay changes to
Italy's pension system.
On Sunday Renzi announced that measures to add flexibility
to the pension system to enable people close to retirement age
to quit work would be passed next year and not in the 2016
budget law.
"It's wrong to delay the decision and consider it an
adjustment, offloading the burden onto the workers," said
Camusso.
Renzi told State broadcaster RAI on Sunday that it was
necessary to wait on the pension moves until 2016 "when the
numbers will be clearer".
He said otherwise there was a risk that any action could
actually cause "damage".
The government had said that it would address the unwanted
aftereffects of a 2011 pension reform, which raised the
retirement age and increased the years of contributions needed
to take early retirement, in its 2016 budget law.
The 2011 law, among other things, created the problem of
the 'esodati' (exiled ones) - people who were left without pay
or a pension after leaving jobs, as under the old rules, they
were eligible to retire.
There have been six interventions on behalf of the 250,000
or more esodati but an estimated 50,000 have still not been
helped.
On Sunday Renzi also said that the famous 80-euro-a-month
tax bonus he introduced last year for low earners will no longer
feature in people's pay packets, but will instead be transformed
into an extra form of tax deduction.
He added that the 2016 budget law will feature a move to
try to reverse the brain drain by bringing 500 Italian
university professors currently working abroad back home.
The premier confirmed that the IMU property tax and the
TASI local-services tax will be scrapped for household's primary
homes in the budget law and that the IRES business tax will be
cut.
"We are the first government to really cut taxes," Renzi
said.
The budget will also feature measures to help some one
million Italian children living in poverty.
Italy's municipalities will get "full compensation" for
the revenue shortfall they will suffer when the government cuts
IMU and TASI in the 2016 budget, the head of the municipalities'
association ANCI, Turin Mayor Piero Fassino, said Monday.
It was up to the government to establish "how and where
it will find the resources", he said.
Fassino said ANCI and the government had had a "positive"
meeting on the budget Monday.
In other economic news Monday the INPS social security
and pensions agency said there were 790,000 new permanent
full-time hires in the first eight months of the year using the
government's three-year labour tax break for employers.
There were 53,002 such new hires as of August, INPS said.
As well, 319,000 more steady job contracts were awarded
in the first eight months of 2015 than in the same period last
year.
In the private sector new steady contracts numbered
1,164,866, about 90,000 more than the number of contracts that
ended.
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