The government on Friday
completed its landmark Jobs Act labour reform with the cabinet
approval of four final enacting decrees, one of which
controversially allows firms to check up on their workers
through remote devices like phones and tablets.
Labour Minister Giuliano Poletti hailed the approval of
the last key decrees.
"We have returned the focus onto steady jobs. Hundreds of
thousands of insecure workers have a steady contract," he said.
The completion of the Jobs Act comes after this week's
encouraging drops in overall unemployment, to 12%, and youth
unemployment, to 40.5%.
They were the lowest rates in at least a year, the
national statistics agency Istat said.
So-called 'social buffers', cushioning the effects of
unemployment, have now been extended to 1.4 million more
workers, Poletti added.
Poletti said a new welfare cheque for the unemployed,
Naspi, would last a year.
The Jobs Act contains new hire-and-fire rules designed to
encourage firms to take on steady workers, but only applies to
to new steady contracts.
In another decree, the so-called 'remote controls' were
approved.
But Poletti stressed that the change to labour law
allowing employers to check up on their workers remotely, by
viewing their activity on phones, tablets and PCs, will "fully"
respect their privacy.
Workers will be warned before the checks are going to be
made, he underscored.
Poletti added that generic resignation letters would no
longer be valid for leaving a job, according to terms that are
part of the last four decrees.
Resignations must be tendered on a form downloaded from
the labour ministry website.
"If there's not a dated and certified form, the
resignation isn't valid," Poletti said.
Poletti also addressed the thorny issue of changes to a
controversial pension reform enacted under a previous
technocratic government led by Mario Monti.
The 2016 budget may contain changes to that 2011 pension
reform to allow people to retire earlier on lower rates,
Poletti said Friday.
He said the budget bill, to be framed by mid-October,
could contain more "flexibility" on pensions.
The so-called Fornero Law, passed at the height of the
euro crisis in December 2011, raised retirement ages and left
thousands of people without a job or pension.
Introducing a flexible pension system encouraging Italians
to retire earlier would have a short term cost but would lead to
savings for the state in the medium term, Undersecretary for the
Economy Paolo Baretta was quoted as saying Friday.
However Baretta challenged an estimate of the short-term
cost of as much as 8.5 billion year, made by the head of the
INPS social security agency, Tito Boeri, saying the real cost
would be "less than half" what Boeri claimed.
"In the medium and long term, making the pension age
flexible would lead the state to save, not to spend more,"
Baretta told the Corriere della Sera.
"Anyone deciding to leave work before 66 would have a
lower cheque not just for some time but for the rest of their
life. From this there would be budget savings".
"To guarantee the equilibrium of the system one must look
not just at today but at the days that come after. However it is
clear that in the immediate there would be costs, but they can
be sustainable"
"One could link the cut in the cheque to income level - if
you take a pension of 1500 euros, you cut 2%, if you take 2,500
euros, you cut a bit more. Or else you could introduce
flexibility gradually".
"In 2016 you allow people to leave one year early, in 2017
two years early, in 2018 you go up to three, and so on," Baretta
said.
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