Labour market governance in Italy: a focus on adult population

Alessandra Caretta, FGB

LAPs & RAPsSecond Peer Review Exchanges

WorkshopRome, 3 - 6 May 2006

Lisbon process (Lisbon 2000; Stockholm 2001; Barcelona 2002; Bruxelles 2003)

Main objectives

Full employment Social inclusion

The European Council of March 2005 relaunched the Lisbon strategy by refocusing on growth and employment in Europe.

Main instrument

EES

3 overarching aims and a range of operational goals

Full employment Quality and productivity at work Social and territorial cohesion

10 specific Guidelines

A set of quantitative outcomes:- An overall employment rate of 70% in 2010- An employment rate for women of 60% in 2010- An employment rate of 50% for older workers (55-64) in 2010.

European Employment Strategy (EES)

Italy: Main statistics on labour market at different institutional levels (average 2004)

City of Rome Region Lazio I taly Total Employment rate

48.9 46.7 45.4

Employment rate: females

41.1 36.4 34.3

Employment rate: males

58 58.2 45.4

Unemployment rate (u.r.)

7.2 7.9 8

Female u.r. 8.2 10.3 10.5 Male u.r. 6.3 6.3 6.4 Total Employment rate: Older workers (55-64)

39.0 30.5

Source: Statistics Unit of City of Rome

The EES model:

Active and preventive policies

National strategies based on a lifecycle approach

meet demographic challenge support economic growth promote full employment support the sustainability of social

protection systems in order to

Increasing labour-force participation and promoting active ageing

National employment strategies for promoting active ageing

1. Institutional framework

2. Actions

1. Institutional framework

Subsidiarity: implementing National Action Plans (NAP; NAP inclusion) is closely worked on with all level of governance (regional, provincial and local government).

Top-down decisional process: country-specific reccomendations are grounded on common EU reccomendations. increasing adaptability of workers and enterprises; attracting more people to the labour market and making work a real

option for all; investing more and more effectively in human capital; ensuring effective implementation of reforms through better governance.

Arguments totally declined to regions: i) normative on functions and activities of employment centres; ii) normative on active labour policies.

Arguments partially declined to regions: i) passive labour policies (allowances; unemployment benefit; employment agencies; CIG).

Devolution process:

Italy is currently undergoing a constitutional reform, started in 2001, which favours federalism and tends to reduce the responsibilities of the state and at the same time assign these to the regional and local authorities.

2.Actions

SOCIAL POLICIES

LABOUR POLICIES

LLL

Welfare reforms

•Intergenerational solidarity between youth and elderly•Quantification of unpaid care work

Active and passive policies

Reform of social security system

a gradual increase in the retirement age;

a financial incentive during the 2004-2007 period for employees in the private sector who wish to continue working, even though they have the years of service requisites needed to take retirement, with a tax-free increase in their pay packets equal to the amount of social security contributions which should be paid to the social security institutions, i.e. a minimum of 32.7% of their total salary;

a wider possibility to sum up labour and retirement income.

Labour market policies raising the tax credit benefit for new employment if the contract is signed

with a worker aged more than 45 years. welfare benefits in order to encourage the transformation of mature

workers’ full-time contracts into part-time contracts to encourage part-time hiring of young workers (Legislative Decree no.276/03)

Under Legislative Decree no. 276/03 workers over the age of 50 are included among the categories of disadvantaged workers who can make use of the so-called social employment or personal service agencies set up under the same reform

Mature workers are also included in the new types of atypical and flexible contracts provided for in Legislative Decree no. 276/03 which can involve either dependent employment or self-employment in order to encourage the emergence of casual work carried out by specific individuals at risk of social exclusion or about to leave the labour market including pensioners.

Passive policies

an extension to 9 months of the potential length of unemployment benefit in favour of over50;

the unemployment benefit applies to older workers in a special manner: the ordinary benefit length is longer both for older worker and southern regions. As for long benefit, its length can stand till the retirement age.

Lifelong Learning (LLL)

Governance Actions

LLL Governance

At central level, both the Ministry of Labour and Social Policies and the Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR) are charged with institutional competences on LLL .

Ministry of Education, Higher Education and Research, Ministry of Labour and Social Policies, regions, autonomous provinces of Trento and Bolzano and local authorities signed a Framework Agreement during the unified conference held in March 2000, to set up an integrated educational and training system in favour of adult population which is structured in three levels: national, regional, local.

Social parts participate in the decisional process at different levels: planning national strategies; and implementing policies at a local level.

LLL Actions The access to basic skills is granted through the activities of permanent

regional centres which offer three types of courses: 1) courses to obtain an educational qualification (62,451 users); 2) language courses for foreign nationals (59,996 users); 3) modular courses, mainly information technology and foreign language courses (292,216 users).

In secondary education establishments, a project to achieve a major increase in the number of adults holding a secondary education certificate was promoted.

The transitory start-up phase of the Joint Interprofessional Funds was completed in 2003. Said funds have been set up in order to promote ongoing training among Italian businesses. Ten funds have been established and authorised to date and represent a large part of the world of businesses and workers.

Individual ongoing training is considered a subjective right whose roots lie in the mediation of workers and company interests following negotiation between the social parties, and even in the absence of corporate/regional training plans and specific collective bargaining is protected by public action which allocates specific resources to this area.

Conclusions• In Italy, active ageing is receiving more and more attention by policy makers dealing with labour market and is getting a significant topic such as the female and youth employment, or regional differences.

•The challenge is to produce a set of measures and incentives devoted to realise a social and occupational context able to allow workers to lengthen their working life, outweighing the generational trade-off.

• Mobilisation of local communities in favour of vulnerable groups is crucial. It is localities that are best placed to translate national and regional strategies into action on the ground. And local actors can best understand local conditions, aspirations and needs.