«In the Democratic Party, but outside the derby. Spanish recipe against precariousness: temporary work is more expensive»

“I think we should be inspired by good examples. In the Spain of the Sanchez government, the reform of minister Diaz, by making fixed-term contracts more expensive, has encouraged stability in employment relationships with a double advantage for workers and businesses. The law is useful if we are talking about that minimum hourly wage which exists almost everywhere in Europe and which should be accompanied by a law on representation to clear the nearly thousand types of contracts – ten years ago they were less than four hundred – a risen number to circumvent a system of protections and guarantees that it is necessary to restore. As for the role of the state in the economy, I believe that the question was resolved a long time ago by Keynes. In phases of difficulty or recession in production, work and consumption, the State must not do a little better or a little worse what others are doing, it must do what no one does, that is, investments”.

Ecology and work. Doesn’t the transition risk losing jobs and damaging our businesses?

«The reality is that that transition cannot be free of charge, but the costs cannot be solely social and weigh on the shoulders of workers and companies forced to lay off or close. The challenge is to ensure that a new model of sustainable development in economic, social and environmental terms includes conversion policies for those sectors that otherwise risk being expelled from the market. If what we really have before us is a new revolution in the forms of production and consumption, then it is necessary that the industrial strategies of a country like ours attack the problem without suffering it with more investment and creativity. All in a perspective where Europe must assume its responsibilities starting with the reform of the stability pact and the rules on state aid”.

Schlein speaks of a “new model of development” and during the work of the constituent assembly someone made criticisms of the capitalist system that recalled old approaches. Don’t you think these discussions are a bit detached from reality?

“I think we shouldn’t be afraid of words. None of us ever imagined we’d be able to witness the assault by hundreds of squadristi on January 6, 2021 at the temple of American democracy, the seat of Congress. But if something like this could have happened and if the president of the United States of America speaks openly of more “fragile” democracies in the heart of the West, it is because the combination of the great crisis of 2008 with the recessions it caused, and following the pandemic, have produced an impact on the middle class that was unprecedented in the second half of the 1900s. When the central body of society, the middle classes, feels its conquests and the same certainties to be transmitted to subsequent generations called into question, the institutions of democracies cannot withstand the impact and this is what we need to reflect on today, on the new link between capitalism and democracy. Out of caricatures, no one imagines leaving a free market society, it is a question of understanding how to reconstruct a pact, a social compromise, which avoids authoritarian tendencies. I believe that a discussion of this kind shouldn’t alarm anyone, least of all the more advanced and dynamic sectors of the company aware that without a social consensus no innovation can establish itself and evolve».