The analysis

Overuse no longer works: so the sick remain sick

A measured and lucid reasoning needs to be made on the redundancy fund

by Paolo Bricco

3 December 2024

Aggiungi Il Sole 24 Ore
ai preferiti su Google

L’uso a oltranza della Cig non funziona più: così il malato resta malato (stock.adobe.com)

3' min read

Key points

Abuse of layoffs
Integration can be good or bad

3' min read

Lay-offs - to the bitter end, for years and years - are good for everyone. When there is a company crisis it is fine with the trade unions, the entrepreneurs, the constituency politicians, the bishop of the diocese. The problem is that it no longer works.

A measured and lucid, balanced and unpretentious reasoning must be made on the lay-off fund. The use of the 'cassa integrazione' is essential to guarantee (partial) income and (relative) peace of mind for families and to allow market forces to try to reassemble the mosaic that has fallen out of place and worn away. Good cassa has a short time horizon and a transitory, not a structural nature. The abuse of the redundancy fund - the decades-long company crises, the use of the Cig always
and in any case, blindly and automatically - has diminished its strategic effectiveness.

A recent enquiry by Il Sole 24 Ore (published in the Sole 24 Ore of Monday, 2 December 2024), shows the not easy conditions in which whole chunks of the Italian economy find themselves. Manufacturing, but not only. The numbers make one's head spin.

Disoccupati iscritti d’ufficio alla piattaforma Siisl: alla terza assenza si perde l’indennità

The economic cycle triggered after the pandemic has accentuated the complexities of the most frayed supply chains, the least solid territories and the most fragile companies. The answer is always the same: lay-offs, lay-offs, lay-offs.

This is nothing new in recent years. It all started with the great staff reduction cycles during the major restructuring of the 1990s. Since then, the redundancy fund has become a cornerstone of the (alleged) industrial and employment policies and the (ambiguous) psycho-political reality of the country.

Abuse of redundancy payment

The abuse of this instrument is of course not ethical or political: it is functional. The 'cassa integrazione', as the prevailing and only crisis management tool, no longer has any real effectiveness and turns the Italian economy into a giant field hospital where the sick continue to remain sick, no one dies and no one is born. In fact, there is a dogma in our public life: no company must close.

Quali novità per il Concordato Preventivo Biennale con la proroga al 12 dicembre 2024?

Distrust in the strength of entrepreneurship, and in the market, is so deep-rooted that people prefer to keep small and large zombie companies 'alive' rather than encourage the birth of new companies, exposed to competition. The Italian comedy is always the same: the trade unions call, the entrepreneurs understand, the bishop intervenes, the prefects mediate, the local politicians turn to the national politicians who are sure to take action.

Integration can be good or bad

The problem is that this no longer works. It is necessary to try to separate the good from the bad redundancy fund. The former guarantees temporary and (fairly) decent income to otherwise unemployed workers, allows them (theoretically) to look for another opportunity, and helps territories to reduce tensions and reduce fear for the future.

La cassa integrazione cresce del 23%: la mappa delle Province più colpite

Instead, the bad redundancy fund is the medicine inoculated for years and years and years to the ailing corporate body, reduced to a parody of an exhausted industrial organism, with a paralysing effect with respect to any possibility of the worker - stuck in the middle world for years and years and years - getting a real job again. And with the risk that the entrepreneur, instead of facing bankruptcy and reopening a new business, also becomes a parody of himself.