Does Italy need a Decent Work Country Programme?
The social partners’ point of view

Decent work for decent life

Leopoldo Tartaglia
CGIL International Department

“Decent Work for Decent Life” is a joint campaign led by Solidar, the International Trade Union Confederation, Social Alert and the Global Progressive Forum. In Italy, it is led by Progetto Sviluppo, an NGO for international cooperation headed by the CGIL. It aims to: build awareness of Decent Work amongst citizens, decision makers and key institutions; show that Decent Work is the only sustainable way out of poverty and is fundamental for building democracy and social cohesion; place Decent Work at the core of development, economic, trade, financial and social policy at the national, European and international levels.

The concept of Decent Work includes equal access to employment, wages and social protection, freedom from exploitation, and union rights. In a democratic, industrialized country like Italy, Decent Work should exist at all levels of society. Nevertheless, many workers are, in fact, excluded from these principles. As regards health and safety in the workplace, Italy reports more than 1,000 fatal accidents every year, thus ranking among the worst countries in Europe. Some of the most important causes of this unacceptable situation are the increased precariousness of employment, particularly among young workers, and the fact that many migrant workers are forced into an illegal status by restrictive laws. At the same time, good laws on workers’ rights and best practice in collective bargaining are often ignored. Does Italy therefore need a “Decent Work Country Programme” too?

Enforcing labour law first

Cinzia Del Rio
UIL International Department

The Decent Work Agenda launched by the ILO some years ago — a series of rules, rights, protections and procedures agreed by ILO member States and aimed at improving working conditions worldwide through the strengthening of social dialogue — was, and still is, an ambitious objective, difficult to reach but absolutely necessary to pursue. Meanwhile, the objective of Decent Work Country Programmes is to support countries — especially developing ones — in adopting and enforcing suitable labour legislation by providing them with advice, training and resources.

Our opinion is that implementing such programmes in industrialized countries like Italy might be inappropriate. Though our country has ratified all the relevant ILO Conventions, which are now part and parcel of its legal system, and transposed the elaborate European legislation as well, unfortunately, serious violations of fundamental workers’ rights are repeatedly reported. Nevertheless, we do not believe that Decent Work Country Programmes are the right answer to this problem in industrialized countries. What is needed instead is the enforcement of existing legislation and the application of suitable provisions.

Furthermore, our fear is that in countries like Italy, in which labour legislation has been able to develop over the years, meeting requirements even higher and better articulated than those of the Decent Work Agenda, the objectives of the Agenda — established as a core of agreed standards for fair global social development — might become the benchmark, with the unwanted consequence of weakening workers’ protection and worsening their working conditions.

All stakeholders should engage in the fight against the violation of labour legislation. They should also work to strengthen and protect the standards reached in industrialized countries, especially social and labour standards.

Involving social partners

Giorgio Usai
Confindustria

Employment, enterprise creation and entrepreneurship lie at the heart of sustainable development and therefore at the heart of efforts by the ILO to achieve Decent Work.

In that prospect, especially for the implementation of the Decent Work Country Programmes, there are some areas of particular interest:

• the adoption at national level of the ILO Global Employment Agenda through national employment policies which support the needs of the SME sector and target youth employment;
• the macroeconomic environment necessary to create and sustain business, including the creation of and support for market supporting institutions;
• good governance, the rule of law, recognition of private property rights and political, economic and institutional stability as necessary prerequisites for economic development;
• policies that support productivity and competitiveness of business; sound, fair and appropriate regulatory and tax regimes which encourage sustained growth and employment creation;
• the reduction of barriers to economic activity including government spending, non-wage labour costs, over-prescriptive standard setting, over-regulation of employer activity;
• human resources development and skills development that link skills to the needs of enterprises.

Decent Work is made up of many components and is relative in terms of content.

The challenge is to develop Decent Work policies that take account of national capacities, and result in the effective balance of economic and social development needs, achieved through a competitive national economy. The development and implementation of Decent Work programmes should be demand-driven and include the full involvement of the social partners who should have the requisite assistance extended to them.