Local authorities, a EUR 2,500 one-off with the double renewal of the contract

'On civil service contracts we have recovered a crazy backlog,' Economy Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti claimed in the Senate on Wednesday, asking businesses to 'do their part'. In fact, over the past two years the PA's race to bring the contractual calendar into line with the real one has been tight. But it is not over. And it awaits two crucial steps in the coming weeks.

The first is already set for 4 November, and has a bureaucratic appearance but a strong substantive impact: that day should close the process for the certification of the new representativeness of the trade unions in the various sectors, an essential step to open the 2025/27 contractual round that has already identified both the resources (in last year's budget law) and the rules of engagement with the general directive signed by the Minister for the Public Administration Paolo Zangrillo.
But for a sort of knock-on effect, the concrete prospect of shortly starting negotiations on the new three-year period may also affect the two tables that have not yet closed the agreement on 2022/2024: these are Education and Research and Local Functions, i.e. Regions, Provinces, Cities, Municipalities and Chambers of Commerce. In all, they embrace more than one and a half million employees.
The domino is in the numbers moved by the intersection of the two three-year periods. To understand this it is sufficient to take a look at the most critical sector, that of local authorities, where the road to renewal has so far been closed by the 'no' of CGIL and UIL, which alone have a majority here. Opposition to the agreement was motivated first and foremost by the inadequacy of the resources, which offer a 6% increase against the abundant 14% recorded by inflation over the three-year period. A full recovery of the price hike is unfeasible (it would have cost almost 32 billion euro for the entire public administration), and the trade unions' demands focused on the idea of bringing forward to 2022/24 a share of the resources allocated for the following three-year period. The hypothesis encounters major obstacles on the accounting ground, but the passage of time makes it more and more concrete on the ground of reality.

Two calculations based on the percentage increases already provided for each year indicate that a close signing in the coming months of the 2022/24 and 2025/27 contracts would bring a one-off 2,500 euro arrears in the pay envelopes of employees of the regions and local authorities, and a monthly increase of around 190 euro from this year, to rise to 230 next year and 280 euro from 2027. And a new test of dialogue was staged yesterday in the meeting between Minister Zangrillo and Uil secretary general Pierpaolo Bombardieri at the inauguration of the high training school for union leaders created by Uil Fpl led by Rita Longobardi. The contract has 'an important allocation, which at other times there has not been,' Bombardieri acknowledged, 'but we need to make an extra effort: let's take all the resources that are already provided until 2027 and sign the contracts tomorrow morning. The total or partial advance, as mentioned above, is complicated, especially now that every line of the public accounts is strained in the effort towards the 3% deficit/GDP; but the passage of weeks may help to shorten the distance between the two rounds. 'I hope that we can find a solution that everyone agrees on,' Zangrillo relaunched.

The 'equalisation fund' proposed by Zangrillo to Giorgetti in view of the manoeuvre to allow entities in economic difficulty to reinforce the accessory salary, as was allowed by the last decree on the PA (Decree 25/2025) to healthy administrations, may also enter the bill. The fund, with an initial endowment of 100-150 million in the hypotheses of the Civil Service, still has to pass the filters that will have to select the proposals to be included in the budget law on the basis of the financial margins that will take shape in the coming days in order to become a reality. But it would represent more oil in the gears of the contract negotiations.