Large-scale retail, Filcams CGIL: ‘Part-time work is imposed in six out of ten cases; decent wages and manageable working hours are needed’

Russo states, in fact, that ‘behind every shopping centre open on 15 August, there are workers who are simply asking for decent wages, manageable working hours, job security and the right to achieve a work-life balance’.

According to Filcams, the ‘deregulation of shop opening hours has produced neither more jobs nor a real increase in consumption. Instead, it has fuelled a model that shifts the burden of competitiveness exclusively onto working conditions, increasing job insecurity, forced flexibility and constant availability’.

For these reasons, Russo emphasises, ‘the time has come to put the quality of work back at the centre and move beyond a model that produces low-quality jobs and precarious working conditions. We need to reopen the debate on Sunday trading and restore value to work in the retail sector, through collective bargaining and a new balance between the needs of businesses and people’s rights’.

In the statement, Filcams concludes by stating that ‘it is time for a paradigm shift. The competitiveness of the retail sector cannot continue to be built by squeezing wages, rights and quality of life. A sector that employs almost three million people deserves investment in quality work, in strengthening collective bargaining, in increasing contractual working hours and in a different approach to regulating shop opening hours. Because there can be no sustainable consumption if it is always workers who pay the price’.

Mauro Lusetti, Confcommercio’s vice-president responsible for collective bargaining, responded by pointing out that ‘every year, without fail, the summer debate on work and working hours resurfaces’.

According to Lusetti, the social partners responsible for collective bargaining in the sector ‘are always responsive to workers’ concerns, as well as to the needs of the market and businesses. The balance between the needs of individual workers and those of businesses – which are called upon to meet consumer demand, particularly during the summer months and in holiday resorts – is, and must remain, first and foremost a matter for discussion between the social partners. This is particularly true when it comes to issues such as the quality of work, pay, working hours and the work-life balance’.

However, Lusetti explains, we must avoid ‘slogans’ and ‘simplistic equations’. He is referring to the quality of employment: ‘It is misleading to regard part-time work, as a matter of course, as synonymous with low-paid work and job insecurity,’ says the vice-president.

The analyses carried out by Confcommercio’s Research Department, the confederation states in a press release, ‘enable us, on the other hand, to distinguish between phenomena that are all too often incorrectly conflated: in-work poverty does not automatically correspond to the level of pay and also depends on the amount of work actually carried out, as well as the hours and days worked’.

In conclusion, Confcommercio points out that ‘we must not overlook the role of the service sector in job creation: in recent years, the services sector has demonstrated a capacity to absorb labour that is significantly greater than that of the manufacturing sector. Part-time work and job insecurity are not synonymous, and confusing the two phenomena amounts to a simplistic interpretation of a much more complex labour market’.