Towards manoeuvre

Labour, tax-free contract increases and welfare discounts on the table

Open construction site. There is also reasoning on subsidised taxation of overtime and holiday work. The opinion of the Mef will be decisive.

by Claudio Tucci

3 September 2025

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3' min read

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In addition to being evoked by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who at the Rimini Meeting relaunched the need to support wages and the middle class, the labour chapter of the next manoeuvre has already begun to come alive with the proposals on which the government and majority are working. The work site has just opened, and much will depend on the costs and coverage on which the Ministry of the Economy, led by the 'prudent' Giancarlo Giorgetti, will then have to decide.

The Irpef cut

The main course is taxation, with the aim of reducing the tax rate for incomes up to EUR 50,000 from 35 to 33 per cent (costing EUR 2.5 billion) or, if possible, applying this demand up to EUR 60,000 (another EUR 1.5 billion would be needed).

The Welfare Worksite

But alongside taxes, other strands are being looked at, starting with welfare. One idea is to raise the ceiling of the deductibility of payments to supplementary pensions (currently EUR 5,164.57 per year). The objective, explains Senator Paola Mancini (Fdi), a member of the Labour Committee of Palazzo Madama, is twofold: 'To strengthen the second pillar, which is still little known, especially by younger people, and to increase salaries with greater tax benefits'.

Contractual increase taxation

For Mancini, it is also crucial 'to continue on the path of tax-free productivity bonuses, given the positive figures on the recovery and the expansion of second-level bargaining. I am also in favour of the de-taxation of contractual increases, and reduced taxation of overtime and holiday work. We must also intervene on meal vouchers and the travel allowance,' continued the Fdi labour expert, 'because both need to be strengthened.

The numbers

The numbers speak for themselves. Today less than two out of five workers are enrolled in supplementary pension schemes. Covip's latest annual report shows that the participation rate, net of those under 15, is 38.3%, slightly up on 2023 (36.9%). And no more than 29.9% of the employed under 35 are participating in supplementary pensions, an increase, however, of 8.4% compared to 2019. Second-level bargaining linked to productivity is going well: as of 15 July, according to the latest focus of the Ministry of Labour, there are 4,225,193 workers involved in bonuses linked to a productivity contract, with an average bonus of EUR 1,601.51 per year.

Still on the subject of bargaining, the League, with Labour Undersecretary Claudio Durigon, is pushing for contract renewals. The Carroccio proposes, at the expiry of the Ccnl, to trigger the increase, regardless of the timing of the actual renewal. The increase should be decided by bargaining. According to ISTAT, at the end of June, there were 31 contracts awaiting renewal involving about 5.7 million employees, 43.7% of the total.

La Pa

The biggest delays are in the tertiary sector and the public administration. But here the machine has accelerated to the point that the 'mother directive' initiating the 2025/27 renewals should soon take final form. Ministries, tax agencies and non-economic entities, together with the health sector, would be ready, because after the signing of the 2022/24 contracts they could see the unprecedented scenario of a negotiation that begins in the first year of the three-year reference period. Further behind are education and local authorities, where, however, a chink has opened up (the next meeting is on Monday, 9 September) after Uil broke away from CGIL by signing the renewal for state managers. In the civil service, therefore, the focus is first of all on running on ordinary renewals, taking advantage of the fact that for the first time the allocations are already complete for the next two rounds. And the manoeuvre is being looked at more than anything else to renew the now 'historic' requests, such as the detaxation of productivity bonuses on the model of what happens in the private sector and the exclusion of corporate welfare resources from the expenditure ceiling for accessory salaries: Ministry of the Economy permitting.