Companies-unions, agreement on wages and representation. Easier renewals and recovery of inflation

ROME – Salaries will be adjusted to inflation even during the validity of national contracts, without waiting for renewal. If prices increase more than expected, the difference will be recovered with annual or biennial checks and the increases will remain vested. If, however, the contract expires without being renewed, mandatory economic protection linked to inflation will be triggered. And to speed up renewals, the platforms will have to arrive six months before the deadline, with a response within a month and the start of the negotiation. These are the main innovations of the framework agreement reached at 5.26 in the morning between CGIL, CISL, UIL and thirteen employers' associations, from Confindustria to Confcommercio, from artisans to cooperatives. After almost eighteen hours of negotiations in the industrialists' headquarters in Rome.

The clash over wages

It is the heart of the agreement, the same one that risked breaking up in October. At the time, the companies had presented a heavily reworked draft, canceling the guarantees requested by the unions: annual checks of the deviations between expected and actual inflation, adjustments to minimum wages and their continuation even after the contract had expired. In their place a generic formula, with checks at least every two years, and a temporary allowance after the expiry, without structural effects on the minimums. "Inadmissible text", the union leaders had reacted. Negotiations continued, but an agreement seemed distant.

Now the compromise recognizes the adjustment of wages during the contract, based on the Ipca Nei index developed by Istat, i.e. inflation net of imported energy. A mechanism already present in the contracts of metalworkers and chemists, extended as a principle to other sectors. The verification will be annual or biannual, according to the individual contracts. The precise methods of recovery and economic coverage after the deadline remain to be known. "It's not indexing, it's bargaining: postponing will no longer be beneficial to anyone", claims the general secretary of the CISL, Daniela Fumarola.

Stop pirate contracts

The other pillar is the measurement of the representativeness of trade unions and business associations, to identify the national reference contract in each sector and to counter pirate contracts, which lower wages and protection. For the unions, members and votes will count in the representation elections. For companies, qualitative criteria, such as the historicity of the organizations, and the number of workers covered by the contracts, detected through Inps-Uniemens data.

The agreement also defines the minimum economic treatment (Tem), the salary base, and the overall one (Tec), including other economic and welfare components. They will be used to compare the different contracts. The welfare benefits paid by companies must be universal, payable and economically quantifiable.

The other news

The possibility of electing unitary trade union representatives (RSU) is expanded, even at the request of 30% plus one of the employees. Interventions on training, safety, participation and preventive discussion on artificial intelligence are also planned.