If the apprenticeship loses its educational dimension

The echo of the discussion taking place in Europe about traineeships does not seem to have reached Italy yet. The reference is to the proposal for a directive 'aimed at ensuring quality working conditions for trainees and combating regular employment relationships disguised as traineeships'. Yet, in the last few weeks the discussion has come to a head in the competent committees of the European Parliament where the proposal started exactly one year ago.

The issue is all the more important for our country if we consider that, after the interventions of the Budget Law of 2022 that abolished the provisions of the Fornero Law on the subject, we are now experiencing a partial regulatory vacuum on an institution that nonetheless concerns over 300,000 people, mostly young people. At the same time, looking at the data, it is also clear that apprenticeships are experiencing a downturn after the great explosion of ten years ago, even if this decline has not, at least so far, strengthened the apprenticeship contract, which in our country suffers, more than elsewhere, from direct competition from internships, which are less onerous and easier for companies to use.

The drop in apprenticeships is explained, on the one hand, by a contraction in the labour supply due to the shrinking of the younger age cohorts, which gives them greater contractual power, leading them to be more sceptical about accepting an unattractive offer, especially in economic terms. But the extra-curricular apprenticeship itself is now known by young people as an instrument that, unfortunately, has no or at least a low training component, with training plans that are not built around the professional profiles that one would like or should build, giving rise to serious abuses in its use.

It was precisely these latter considerations that led the Commission to the proposal for a directive, but the direction it is taking seems to lead towards a heterogenesis of ends. In the recent opinion of the Committee on Culture and Education of the European Parliament, for example, it is proposed to create more protection for trainees by making internships a real employment contract, albeit of short duration and with a compulsory, albeit lower than ordinary, wage. The object of the measures envisaged in Europe would therefore no longer be to strengthen (and make effective) the training dimension of the institution, which is its main characteristic and in respect of which the abuses of those who use internships as a cheap insertion contract arise. The proposal for a traineeship directive would therefore be content to monetise these abuses by making the traineeship, even when part of a formal training or active employment policy pathway, a short and cheap entry contract into the labour market.

In reality there would be many useful actions to safeguard the instrument in our country, but a new agreement would have to be reached in the State and Regional Conferences, after the regulation promoted through the Fornero law, now repealed on this point. There is nothing to prevent, for example, the introduction also in Italy of an incentivised job placement contract, as was done in the past with the Biagi law, so as to separate real contractual relations from training and alternation experiences either in apprenticeships or through apprenticeships enhanced above all in their curricular dimension, that is, in close connection with schools, universities and training centres. One could, for example, strengthen the mechanisms for certifying the training actually carried out; invest with incentives in the key figure of tutors; select and qualify those who are allowed to promote apprenticeship training courses; finally, imagine a restriction for extra-curricular apprenticeships that are not promoted directly by training institutions. The real critical element for the quality of training-work integration pathways, however, seems to us to be the ability to involve, on an equal footing and not as passive spectators, the industrial relations actors in their construction, so as to ensure greater integration between the training component and the production and work contexts where this training can actually develop.