Italian Premier Matteo Renzi on
Friday reiterated a warning against letting labour-reform issues
become a "terrain of conflict".
"I've made this appeal in the last few days and I'll make
it again," he said at the opening of a Piaggio Aerospace plant
at Villanova d'Albenga near the French border.
Tension is high between Renzi's executive and Italy's
biggest trade union confederation, the CGIL - especially its
metalworkers' arm FIOM - over the government's Jobs Act labour
reform.
The reform features changes for new hires to Article 18 of
the 1970 Workers Statute protecting staff from unfair dismissal
- a move the CGIL sees as a attacking a basic right, but which
the government says will encourage firms to hire people.
The conflict over this issue took on a grim reality when
five striking steelworkers were hospitalized with head injuries
after clashes with police last month at a demonstration in Rome
by workers from the AST steel plant in Terni protesting against
jobs cuts.
As well, angry protesters fearing for their jobs at an
Alcatel-Lucent plant pelted Renzi's staff car with eggs Thursday
near the northern city of Monza.
Renzi's pithy rejoinder that "if they throw eggs, I'll make
crepes" did nothing to calm the controversy.
"It's OK to have different ideas, it's OK to debate, but
there'll be trouble if the world of labour is seen as a
battleground," Renzi said.
The leader of the CGIL, which has traditional ties with
the premier's center-left Democratic Party, promptly replied
that it is up to the premier to resolve the clash with unions
over his controversial labour reforms because he "triggered" the
row in the first place.
"We must think of a world of labour that is united and
based on solidarity, and for this to happen the first condition
is to remove the divisions and the will to cause further
divisions," said Susanna Camusso.
The conflict with the government, she said, springs from
fact that his government is prolonging policies which labor says
have failed to lift Italy out of seven years of economic crisis.
"We are still convinced this government can change its tune
- it must change its tune," Camusso said on the sidelines of a
conference in the northern city of Padua.
She went on to point out that if the country has lost
billions in foreign investments, it is due to corruption and not
to Article 18.
"In the past few years our country lost 16 billion euros
due to corruption not Article 18," Camusso said.
"Clearly we need a new commitment to fighting corruption".
Her remarks came after Bank of Italy Governor Ignazio Visco
said Friday that crime and endemic corruption in Italy is
hampering investment, particularly from abroad, and has lost
Italy 16 billion euros of potential foreign investment between
2006 and 2012.
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