«The premier receives us»- Corriere.it

For a few days the center-left has found an unexpected unity, the glue has been there minimum wage bill. Except Matteo Renzi, all the leaders have signed it, confident that they can find an agreement with the government. But on the enthusiasm of the minority comes the cold shower of the Minister of Labour, Marina Calderone: «I’m not convinced that the minimum wage can be reached by law», she cuts short. And the secretary of the Democratic Party lashes out against her Elly Schlein: «I want to remind the minister of the three million working poor».

Closed game? He tries to reopen it Charles Calendaleader of Action: «I wrote to Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, I asked you to receive us so that this proposal can become shared. All G7 countries have a minimum wage: France, Germany, Great Britain, America. Italy must have it too ». It won’t be easy, it doesn’t look easy. Calderone’s voice is joined by not a few voices of parliamentarians from the majority, but also that of Luigi Sbarra, general secretary of the CISL: «The minimum wage must be implemented, but with contracts not with the law, otherwise we risk creating alibis and pretexts for companies that may decide not to apply the contracts, but to rigorously follow any law minimum threshold and thus determining a downward spiral in the dynamics of wages».

But Elly Schlein goes even further, arguing: «This government cannot fail to understand that below a certain threshold, work becomes exploitation. Our proposal strengthens collective bargaining because it enforces for all workers in a sector the total wage envisaged by the comparatively more representative contract. And fix one too threshold of 9 euros per hour, below which one cannot go down even in bargaining”. The secretary of the Democratic Party had been pounding on the minimum wage button for a long time. And now she talks about it with enthusiasm: «Work must be paid with dignity by those who use it. The taxman must be rewritten to give fairness to the levy by structurally reducing the burden on employee work and not through the kind concession of temporary and categorical subsidies or tax cuts”.

But Minister Calderone has a ready reply, from a distance: «We are pay attention to all the dynamics of the world of work and we are convinced that we must invest in quality collective bargaining. In the Community context, the directive itself says that the minimum wage can be reached through different paths. You can support quality bargaining too with contract renewal paths through tax relief and with tax and social security benefits. I want to work a lot on second-level national bargaining». The opposition also makes itself felt Riccardo Magi, +Europe: “The opposition’s minimum wage proposal must be scheduled, discussed in the shortest possible time or it would be a very serious trip to the regular democratic confrontation between majority and minority”.

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