The Meloni maneuver splits the unions. Landini: “Let’s go on with the strikes”

Even before that the meeting with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni take place, the regional organizations of CGIL and UIL had already decided to call a general strike. At the end of the interview, as was easy to predict, the mobilizations remain confirmed. “We have confirmed the negative judgment on the budget, particularly on incomes. We have raised the issue of precariousness and the problem of taxation and evasion. The logic of the flat tax is wrong. The government’s responses have confirmed deep distances on taxation and precariousness”, declared the general secretary of the CGIL Maurizio Landini outside Palazzo Chigi. “It is necessary to continue the mobilization and request profound changes to a maneuver that risks further impoverishing people“. So from 12 to 16 December 21 mobilizations will be distributed in Italy, one for each region.

Landini is following along the whole line Pierpaolo Bombardieri, the general secretary of Uil, who going into the merits of the contents added: “There is no response to the emergency of wages and pensions. We had asked for a tax reduction of the thirteenth salary, the contractual increases and there are no measures in progress There is an intervention on the tax wedge, but partial, up to 20 thousand euros, which in our opinion is insufficient”. Referring to what was said to the prime minister, Bombardieri added that “with respect to the measures that intervene on the tax authorities, on the cap on cash at five thousand euros, on the amnesty and on the Pos, the feeling we have is that this maneuver means that in this country it is possible to evade taxes and that this can be done to the detriment of employees and pensioners who pay almost 90 percent of the Irpef in this country”.

For its part, Meloni defended the structure of the maneuver, telling the unions that “governments are responsible for making choices”, because “if we lined up all the demands, there wouldn’t be the resources to do everything anyway”. And he later claimed that there is “no sign of laxity” on tax evasion. Reassurances that have not convinced the general secretaries of CGIL and UIL, much more critical of the CISL, which at the moment does not seem willing to take to the streets. Indeed, the secretary Luigi Sbarra himself reported positive openings on the part of the government: “Meloni has recognized how the proposals put forward are acceptable, committing himself as a government to a supplementary assessment and to consider the possibility of making improvements during the approval process”, he said after the meeting. “We consider the commitments undertaken relevant and significant. Now it is important to follow up on the availability announced both by improving the budget law and with a view to starting a season of participatory change on the reforms”, concluded Sbarra, thus distancing himself from the negative judgment of the other participants at the table.

On the merits, the main issues raised by Sbarra on which the premier would have said she was open to further insights concern the full revaluation of all pensions, the elimination of restrictions on the women’s option, the strengthening of the tax wedge and the de-contribution for the hiring and stabilization of young people and women. But it is the starting point of the requests made by Cisl, Cgil and Uil that brings the government’s position closer to that of the first trade union acronym, which welcomed the intention to convene two discussion tables on work and pensions at the ministry led by Marina Calderone. An initiative that was instead liquidated by Bombadieri: “With tables you don’t pay bills and you don’t eat”. A slogan that Bombardieri and Landini are also ready to chant from the squares.