Labour market governance in Italy: a focus on adult population

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Labour market governance in Italy a focus on
adult population
LAPs RAPs Second Peer Review Exchanges
Workshop Rome, 3 - 6 May 2006

• Alessandra Caretta, FGB

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

• Main objectives
• Full employment
• Social inclusion

Main instrument EES
The European Council of March 2005 relaunched the
Lisbon strategy by refocusing on growth and
employment in Europe.
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3 overarching aims and a range of operational
goals
European Employment Strategy (EES)

• 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.
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Italy Main statistics on labour market at
different institutional levels (average 2004)
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The EES model
Increasing labour-force participation and
promoting active ageing

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

• Active and preventive policies
• National strategies based on a lifecycle approach
  

in order to
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National employment strategies for promoting
active ageing

• Institutional framework
• Actions

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1. Institutional framework

• 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.

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

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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.
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).
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2.Actions

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

Active and passive policies
SOCIAL POLICIES
LLL Welfare reforms
LABOUR POLICIES
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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.

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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.

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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.

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Lifelong Learning (LLL)

• Governance
• Actions

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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.

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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.

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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.