National collective agreements focus on healthcare and negotiating funds
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Covid, inflation, flexibility. But also healthcare and supplementary pensions. Collective bargaining becomes a tool that follows the long wave of what is happening in the country and is increasingly open to the search for measures that bring well-being to workers’ lives. The Intesa Sanpaolo Adapt report, analyzing the company contracts signed between 2015 and 2021, as well as 58 national collective labor contracts, found that welfare represents a fundamental tool for interpreting the new dynamics of the labor market and for dealing with contingencies, from the impact of Covid to rising inflation. Thus, in the corporate contracts signed between 2015 and 2021 in the field of corporate welfare, collective bargaining mainly regulates solutions of organizational flexibility and work-life balance. If, on the other hand, we take the national collective labor agreements, then 76% of those analyzed provide for the compulsory and automatic registration of workers in the sector’s negotiating funds. «The Report confirms the vivacity in the use of the tool within the variegated system of Italian industrial relations – interprets Professor Michele Tiraboschi, scientific coordinator of ADAPT -. Reading welfare from this point of view helps to understand how this can be declined in different ways depending on the specificities not only of the sector but also of the corporate population and the territories in which it is implemented and used. There are still many steps to take and we must not retreat towards a vision of welfare that is distant from the needs of accompaniment to businesses and workers in the complex challenges that await us and which already characterize the world of work. Challenges that require the creativity and action of the social partners starting from the varied set of tools that corporate welfare makes available».
The role of supplementary healthcare
The report explored the system of supplementary health care funds, established and regulated by collective bargaining in the various sectors. Most of the contracts analyzed (44 out of 58, equal to 76% of the total) provide for the compulsory and automatic registration of workers employed in the companies that apply the contract to the sector negotiated funds. However, there are contractual systems (for example in the macro-sector of chemicals and in the field of service companies) in which the parties have opted for the introduction of voluntary adhesion mechanisms. Virtuous cases are recorded in particular in the chemical-pharmaceutical and energy and petroleum sectors, where the processes for joining the funds have been favored by an incisive action of company bargaining on the matter. Looking then at the services guaranteed by the funds, an increasingly broad coverage capacity emerges both for the costs borne by the user for the health services of the National Health System and for supplementary services with respect to the essential levels of assistance (LEA) that the national health service provides to citizens. Two issues seem to assume particular importance, namely the coverage of the risk of non-self-sufficiency and the way in which the health funds have moved to deal with the pandemic. Starting from the coverage of the risk of non-self-sufficiency, the measures are essentially characterized by the direct provision of social-health services through affiliated facilities or, alternatively, reimbursements for expenses incurred for oneself or, in some cases, also for one’s family members , to take advantage of measures ranging from physiotherapy services to home assistance through figures such as cleaners and carers. It should be noted, during the pandemic emergency, the rapid response of the funds themselves, in the face of unprecedented circumstances that cannot be planned in advance, which helped support businesses and workers in the most complex phase of the Covid-19 emergency.
The focus on the tertiary sector
Within the framework defined by the national level, this year the Intesa-Adapt report analyzed the interventions on welfare that the social partners have developed through the local bilateral bodies. It emerges that the tertiary sector, distribution and services is one of the macro-sectors in which the productive fabric is more pulverized and this makes company bargaining difficult. For this reason, the role of bilateral bodies, both at a national level and, above all, at a local level, is crucial in recognizing welfare measures other than those recognized by the national collective labor agreement for an ever-increasing number of employees. From the monitoring of company contracts signed between 2015 and 2021, however, it emerges that in the field of company welfare, collective bargaining mainly regulates solutions of organizational flexibility and work-life balance. “The report bears witness to the Intesa Sanpaolo Group’s commitment to corporate and occupational welfare and can help stimulate collective debate on the subject,” says Tiziana Lamberti, Sales & Marketing Wealth Management & Protection director of Intesa Sanpaolo. «Our goal is to establish a point of reference for the needs of companies and employees, thanks to a specific offer. Welfare Hub is our digital and multi-channel relationship platform that allows the management of corporate welfare programs, adopted by over 4,800 client companies, to which over 206,000 employees refer. Furthermore, through the Insurance Division, we offer complementary pension solutions as well as collective coverage for accident and health risks dedicated to the business world for companies interested in insuring entire homogeneous categories of workers”.
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