Domestic work, vouchers: “Experience shows that they are of little use, without incentives for families”

ROME – “Vouchers are back for domestic work. But experience shows that they are of little use, without incentives for families”. This is how it reads on the website ofDomina Observatory on domestic work, a sector that has a lot to do with the current demographic and migratory dynamics. According to the draft approved by the Council of Ministers, one of the novelties of the 2023 Budget Law would be the reintroduction of vouchers for occasional and seasonal work, therefore mainly intended for the agriculture, tourism and personal services sectors, with particular reference to the housework.

The attempt to bring out the undeclared work. The objective of this provision would be to bring out irregular work, making regularization more streamlined for workers who work a few hours a week or short periods during the year. However, the Italian experience shows that, at least in domestic work, tools of this type have never been widely used by families, except when linked to incentives and bonuses.

The history of vouchers in domestic work. Introduced in Italy in 2003 (with the law 30/2003, “Biagi law”), the vouchers were initially reserved for students and pensioners in the agricultural sector, but have progressively been extended to all sectors. The abolition took place in 2017, thus avoiding the abrogation referendum already scheduled for May of that year. Until 2017, therefore, vouchers were allowed for occasional jobs with total compensation not exceeding 5,000 euros per year. In the 2023 version, this threshold should rise to 10,000 euros. In 2016, the year of maximum expansion of this tool, the workers involved were 1.7 million, with an average of 75 hours per capita and an average gross amount of 746 euros. In that year, the domestic workers involved were just over 50,000, equal to 3% of the total workers involved. Even if we look at the sum of the vouchers used between 2013 and 2017, domestic work only benefited by 4.1% vouchers, while the sectors that have made the most use of them are Commerce (18.0%) and Tourism (16.2%).

what is theDOMINA National Observatory. It is a study and data collection center for monitoring and studying the activities, phenomena and trends of the sector at a national and local level. It was established in 2019 by theNational Association of Domestic Work Employer Families (Signatory of the CCNL for the category), which protects families in the management of professional relationships with workers. L’Association has decided in recent years to give value to its information assets by creating a statistical Observatory to monitor the employment structure, the weight of workers’ wages on family budgets, the incidence of the sector on GDP, regional differences, comparison with data and policies national and European and transversal aspects related to domestic work.