Miracolo Tridico: in Roma Tre here is Schlein and Conte together. But the leader of the left here is Landini

In the front row on the left, having arrived punctually for the start of the meeting, they sit down the secretaries of CGIL and UIL Maurizio Landini and Pierpaolo Bombardieri. Almost identical clothes, they are distinguished by the pins with the colors of the respective unions, the red secretary and the blue secretary. On the right, however, it has just arrived Elly Schlein. Blue-jeans, jacket and t-shirt in shades of blue, Stan Smith on his feet, armo-chromic is more in line with Bombardieri. To arrive last, after having sent the trusted deputy Paola Taverna for inspection, here Joseph Conte. When, after having shaken all available hands and received a ritual applause, sits down next to Schlein, a jolt of excitement runs through the photographers. Here they are together. Elly and Joseph. Again, after Molise.

We are in Roma Tre, the Economics department in via Silvio D’Amico, in the San Paolo district. The “Wage and inflation” conference takes place in a graduation hall unusually full of cameras and photographers. Among the mutterings of colleagues and young researchers, the return to the chair of the outgoing INPS president, Professor Pasquale Tridico is celebrated. He is the master of ceremonies of this alchemical rite of union of the left. As an amalgam there is the proposal of minimum wage at 9 eurossigned last Friday by all the opposition (Conte finally thanks him: “It is thanks to him that we are here, we understand why Meloni wanted to commission him, with his enlightened vision, it is incompatible with the social Darwinism of the government”).

Bombardieri is in favour: “If linked to national contracts, we can only agree.” As soon as he arrived he had fired a broadside at his absent colleague, the CISL secretary Luigi Sbarra who had criticized the proposal in an interview with the press. “I’m not used to commenting on colleagues’ statements. I say that the minimum wage is needed because there are three million workers in this country who are below that threshold. However, there is a problem of underpaid work, of pirate contracts also signed by yellow unions who dialogue very well with Sbarra”.

Even Landini now recognizes the need for a minimum wage, but is much more timid on the point. “The minimum wage is fine, but it’s not enough. The goal is to arrive at a law on representation that gives legal force to the most representative contracts,” he said during his speech.

Not secondary detail: if the center-left leader were chosen by the students, researchers and professors of Roma Tre it would be neither the embarrassed Elly Schlein, nor the pleasant Giuseppe Conte, but the extremely combative Landini (joke by Lina Palmerini, journalist of the Sole 24 ore who moderates the meeting: “If the voice continues to rise, I think they will hear it at Palazzo Chigi too”, joke by Bombardieri: “I dream of speaking at least half of Landini”). The decibel difference of the applause meter in the room is embarrassing, however. And on the other hand, the secretary of the CGIL is the only one who, before the political round table, listened and took notes tirelessly during the speeches of the professors (in addition to Tridico, a professor at the grillina level, there is Maria Cecilia Guerra, professor in Modena but also in charge of labor policies for Schlein’s Democratic Party) and of the managers of the Bank of Italy, Istat and the Parliamentary Budget Office (Sergio Nicoletti Altimari, Linda Laura Sabbadini and Lilia Cavallari).

Schlein and Conte (decidedly more him than her) are committed to conquering the audience. She brought the trust with her Gaspare Righi, the mathematician friend who he put in charge of his secretariat and with whom he consults continuously on Whatsapp to make his intervention effective. He tries to expose the other things he would like to work on with the other opposition forces: from equal leave to the protection of digital jobs, but they are generic commitments.

While Conte, sensitive to the interests of the press and photographers, immediately takes care to reduce the meeting with Schlein: “You journalists are always there to see if we smile, we don’t smile, but here it’s not simply a matter of talking to each other, the problem is bringing the lens home which, we have to tell ourselves, doesn’t seem within reach because the Meloni and Calderone’s reactions were closing”. For this he says: “We have organized the demonstration of 17 June making precarious workers and people talk, not politics”. He attacks the government with violence, suspending that “it is planning a social fire”, but when he dares to speak of “seller inflation” in the audience there are those who put their hands in their hair, there is the stench of the studio in the car arriving. On the other hand, to embarrass Schlein, he manages to point out that the Meloni government and the Democratic Party share “the warlike line on Ukraine”.

The secretary for her part tries to try a strong card. You first announce that from July 6 you will see social partners to agree on more initiatives. She then flames up: “It can’t be taboo to talk about taxation on income, when we talk about redistribution we have to say this too”. But even this doesn’t shake the audience. It’s too general a commitment.

Conte relaunches by signaling that the president of Confindustria Carlo Bonomi has just said that he is not against the minimum wage. But here, where they know that industrial contracts are already above the level set at 9 euros a month, nobody gets excited. Landini, on the other hand, talks non-stop, pouring out numbers and paragraphs of collective agreements (again the moderator journalist Palmerini: “I understand your strategy, you speak so often that you won’t let me in, I don’t envy Bombardieri who has to work with you”).

In the Economics department of Roma Tre (dominated by the students of Garagnano, a heterodox economist very left-leaning), however, they have already elected the leader of the left: Maurizio Landini. “With the government – he attacks – we are having useless and finite meetings, four minutes and imagine what a struggle I have, and then they also get acronyms that don’t represent anyone to talk”.