Job rule raises ire
Govt foes call for 'mass action' on new unfair-dismissal norm
04 March, 16:37
(ANSA) - Milan, March 4 - A change to Italy's job protection
norms has raised union and opposition hackles with the prospect
of a mass protest during a general strike called by Italy's
biggest trade union CGIL against the government's economic
policies on March 12.The change, passed into law by the Senate Wednesday night, gives sacked workers the option of resorting to arbitration instead of an automatic appeal to a magistrate over allegedly unfair dismissal.
Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right government insists that workers will still enjoy the same safeguards against sacking but CGIL and the centre-left opposition say the change would make workers and job applicants more vulnerable.
"If applicants are asked to give up the option of the magistrature to defend their rights then they aren't fully free to say No and they'll be at the mercy of employers," CGIL leader Guglielmo Epifani said Thursday.
Epifani said CGIL may appeal to the Constitutional Court. The other two main unions, CISL and UIL, have also distanced themselves from the norm but so far stopped short of joining the March 12 general strike.
CGIL and the opposition, however, claim the norm is a veiled version of a change to Article 18 of the Workers' Statute which caused a huge battle between unions and a previous Berlusconi government eight years ago.
Berlusconi was forced to pull that reform after then CGIL leader Sergio Cofferati mustered three million people to a Rome protest.
Cofferati, now a Euro-MP for the largest opposition group, the Democratic Party (PD), on Thursday described the change as "much worse" than the previous one and called for "a mass initiative in the streets and in the workplace".
"I hope we can get a united union response and a strong political move from the opposition," the former Bologna mayor told ANSA.
PD Senate whip Anna Finocchiaro said the Senate had "written an ugly page for Italian workers" in a "further attack on workers' rights".
Antonio Di Pietro, a former graftbusting prosecutor who heads the second-biggest opposition party, Italy of Values (IdV), said the measure "foments violence against the working world".
IdV Senator Giuliana Carlino said "the lack of trade union unity on such an important issue is absurd".
The PD's ex-labour minister, Cesare Damiano, called the measure "a 'surgical corrective' that will leave its mark".
But Labour Minister Maurizio Sacconi of Berlusconi's People of Freedom (PdL) party said there had been "no protests" during the measure's two-year passage through parliament while PdL Senate whip Maurizio Gasparri said workers' rights "have not been weakened, but strengthened".
The small-business association Confcommercio agreed with the government, saying recourse to arbitration rather than a judge "is certainly not a reduction in safeguards".
Article 18 only applies to firms with more than 15 workers, a minority in Italy where small family-based companies are still the backbone of the economy.
Economists say many firms choose to keep their workforces small to have the flexibility to shed workers but most would like the option of growing them without being held back by the safeguard.
Studies have shown that judges more often than not side with workers in unfair-dismissal cases.
But union experts say big firms want greater powers to get rid of workers in economic downturns and arbitration gives them greater leeway to shrink their labour forces.
