Board jobs and profit sharing: the CISL proposal

ROME. Places on boards of directors or supervisory boards, profit sharing, incentives for workers and businesses, but not only. For the Cisl, the time has come to seriously implement article 46 of the Constitution according to which “for the purposes of the economic and social improvement of work and in harmony with the needs of production, the Republic recognizes the right of workers to collaborate , in the ways and within the limits established by law, to the management of companies”. Hence the idea of ​​presenting today in Cassation a popular initiative bill – entitled “Participation in Work” – which for the Via Po union represents the strategic priority for the coming months and years. The objective of the union led by Luigi Sbarra is to “foster a change in the country’s economy, thanks to a different relationship between workers and public and private companies. Without imposing anything by law, but making the most of contractual agreements”, ranging from simple information to employees to co-decision on work organization, from profit sharing to company shareholding, up to the entry of workers’ representatives into company boards .
The proposal – on which the collection of signatures throughout the country will start from May – consists of 22 articles divided into 9 titles and has the ambition to “profoundly change the economic model and promote participation and economic democracy in Italy, as a fundamental right of workers and citizens, a lever for socially sustainable development”. The presentation mentions at least 40 examples of large and medium-sized groups – from Luxottica to Piaggio to Leroy Merlin to name just three names – in which the most diverse experiences of contractual participation between trade unions and entrepreneurs have consolidated in recent years. For the Cisl, it is now a question of extending and generalizing these experiences, of making them the normality of union relations, of pushing towards an increasingly effective and characterizing worker-company participation, such as to make greater economic democracy concrete in our country.
The text prepared by the confederation explains in articles 1 and 2 the purposes of the law and the definitions of managerial, economic-financial, organizational and consultative participation. Article 3 goes on to explain how these different forms can be implemented concretely starting with the entry of workers’ representatives into Supervisory Boards in companies that adopt the dual system of governance and – in Article 4 – participation in the Board of Directors of the companies on the basis of the methods established in the contracts. In both cases, there are no obligations for private companies to adhere to this model, while article 5 states that publicly-owned companies “must integrate the board of directors with at least one director appointed by the employees”. Article 6, on the other hand, regulates the matter of the distribution of corporate profits to employees, providing for a substitute tax on these incomes of 5% within the gross annual limit of 10 thousand euros. Another innovation is in article 7 relating to the participatory instrument of “share plans”, with the attribution, on a voluntary basis, to employees, of financial instruments for the possession of shares in the companies’ capital. Then introducing into the Italian legal system, with article 8, a very widespread institution in Anglo-Saxon law, the so-called voting trust, which here is called “Agreement of fiduciary assignment for the collective management of rights deriving from financial participation”. Basically a trust, a trust fund, to which workers can entrust their shares to have them “weighed” in the votes of the company meetings. Articles from 9 to 15, then, regulate the organizational and consultative participation, the awards for innovation and efficiency, the training obligations of the employees involved in the various forms of co-decision.

Again, article 19 provides for tax breaks for employees and companies themselves that promote participatory methods. In the Cisl proposal, the expenses for a financial participation plan (referred to in article 7) up to a maximum of 10 thousand euros per year and the innovation awards described in article 10 would become deductible for workers. would be possible for companies that promote financial participation plans with the same limits for each worker and the entire value of the shares in the event of free allocation to employees. Finally, the bill provides for the establishment, at the Cnel, of a “Permanent National Commission for Workers’ Participation” and the establishment of a “Guarantor of the social sustainability of enterprises” within the Ministry of Labour. As for the coverage of the law, calculated at 50 million euros, the union’s proposal is to draw them from the “Fund for structural economic policy interventions (law 282/2004)” under the heading “Definition of building offenses”, in practice from the money of the building amnesty.