The artisans’ dispute risks scuppering the agreement between trade unions and businesses

The major agreement to revolutionise industrial relations has stalled. Negotiations between trade unions and employers, which have been ongoing for months, were due to conclude in September but were immediately pushed back to October; then there was talk of mid-November, and now it would be considered a success if an agreement could be reached by the end of the year. And there is no guarantee that this will be achieved. The latest meeting on 15 October, bringing together the leaders of CGIL, CISL and UIL and the thirteen business associations around the table, failed to produce any results. Hours and hours of negotiations, with tense moments in which voices were raised, led to the decision to cancel the next two meetings that had already been scheduled. “It’s not a breakdown,” the participants insist, so much so that discussions are continuing and informal meetings are still taking place. But the atmosphere is no longer as enthusiastic as it was in the early stages.

The stumbling block that cannot be overcome is wages. The trade unions are insisting that wages be periodically adjusted in line with the cost of living, using a mechanism that takes inflation into account, modelled on the metalworkers’ system. But this is where the differing interests within the business community – perhaps too diverse a group – come into play, as the priorities of large and small businesses, of industry and the cooperative or craft sectors, do not align. While Landini, Fumarola and Bombardieri present a united trade union front, the business side is beginning to fray. Even the issue of ‘pirate’ contracts – crucial for Confindustria and Confcommercio – is not viewed with the same urgency by the other associations.

The situation has become even more tense following the recent revision of the framework law on the craft sector, which allows companies in the sector to increase their workforce without losing the benefits – in terms of wages and social security contributions – typical of the craft sector. Strongly backed by the Ministry of Labour, this change is causing a fierce clash between Confindustria and the three trade federations: Confartigianato, Casa and Clai. According to industrialists, the reform poses a problem of unfair competition, fostering a ‘grey area’ where the very ‘dumping’ contracts that the reform aims to eliminate would end up flourishing. This carries the risk that 2 million workers could switch from the more expensive industrial contract to the more cost-effective craft sector contract.

The president of Confindustria, Emanuele Orsini, has repeatedly emphasised that “industry offers the best contracts and pays the highest wages”, and if there are problems with low wages, one should look elsewhere, “for example, to craftspeople”. His indictment of those “trade associations that defend their own interests at the expense of workers and businesses” is scathing: Orsini asserts that the problem lies not so much with artisans as with “those who seek to exploit a legal definition to gain economic and social security benefits that have nothing to do with the true nature of an artisan business”. Therefore, “artisan associations must explain whether their aim is genuinely to defend artisans or to defend their own system of representation and their own budgets”. Finally, he emphasised that Confindustria “will continue to defend these principles in every forum, using all the tools at its disposal. We are not prepared to back down a single millimetre when fairness, the future of our businesses and the rights of Italian workers are at stake”.

Artisans respond indignantly that “they want to prevent businesses from growing”, whilst CGIL, CISL and UIL have sided with Confindustria: in recent days, their leaders have boycotted the Confartigianato assembly. The negotiations, which were already extremely difficult, cannot help but be affected by this clash. To resolve the dispute, mediation would be needed – a role once played by governments. But today, the suspicion is that behind the issue of the craft sector lies an attempt to throw a spanner in the works of negotiations that the government has largely had to endure, relinquishing its authority over contracts and representation to make way for the social partners. And if they were to fail, so be it.