Civil servants: record number of contracts – 20 agreements in five years

Following the agreement reached on Tuesday 21 July on the 2025–27 collective agreement for the 404,000 local authority employees, on Wednesday 22, the tabling of the pay scales gave a boost to negotiations on the renewal of the contract for the approximately 550,000 nurses and healthcare technicians, whilst the Cabinet is expected to give the go-ahead to the agreements already reached for the 193,000 employees of ministries, tax agencies and non-economic public bodies (the 2025–27 collective agreement for central government departments) and for the nearly 8,000 managers of schools and research bodies (where the three-year period is 2022–24).

The process of renewing public-sector pay agreements is running smoothly, particularly now that the CGIL has rejoined the signatories to the agreements, having set aside the opposition it maintained over the previous three-year period. Consequently, the process is gathering pace. Paolo Zangrillo, the Minister for the Public Administration, who in this round has succeeded – for the first time in the history of the public sector’s contractual framework – in signing agreements for the current three-year period rather than for periods that have already expired, as has always been the case in the past, has repeatedly reiterated the aim of finalising the 2025–27 agreements for all sectors by the end of the year. Given the latest developments, this target appears achievable sooner, to the extent that the agreement on the healthcare sector could be finalised as early as Wednesday 29th. There will then be a brief final stage involving checks by the General Accounting Office and the Court of Auditors prior to the final signing (though for local authorities, approval could be granted shortly).

It was not so long ago that the ARAN headquarters – which represents the public administration as an employer in negotiations with the trade unions – was a place frequented exclusively by the fifty or so employees of the negotiating agency, engaged in a quiet routine of drafting opinions and dealing with paperwork, as collective bargaining was blocked by law. After an eight-year standstill, the process resumed in 2018, albeit at a slower pace due to delays in funding allocations, which were only included in the budget once the three-year period had ended.Following an initial boost in 2021, with the public sector employment pact promoted by the then Minister for the Public Administration, Renato Brunetta, the turning point came with the 2025 Budget Law. And it came from Brussels.The new ‘Stability Pact’ has, in fact, required Member States to plan certain expenditure in advance for the entire period covered by the budget plans, overcoming the artificiality of the ‘current legislation’ criterion, which allowed future obligations to be ignored simply because they were not provided for by laws in force. However, items such as contract renewals or funding for international missions are certain even if the specific provision governing them in detail is still missing. And they must be covered. Just as with public administration payment times – which have fallen from an average of 74 to 27 days over 10 years – this structural reform, too, has unfolded amid almost total political indifference. Yet it has had an impact on the conditions of the 3.4 million public sector employees (including university lecturers and magistrates, whose pay is ‘linked’ to that of contract staff). Since 2022, 20 national collective agreements have been renewed.

Barring any surprises in the healthcare sector, the 2025–27 round will see the final agreement for the last sector concluded within six months of the first renewal coming into force (the renewal for central government departments was finalised on 9 June). The timeframe would be more than halved compared with the 12.9 months of the 2022–24 round, and reduced by more than two-thirds compared with the 20.3 months of the 2019–21 round. It will take a little longer for senior managers: but their pay packets are very substantial. The speed of the pay rises is a crucial factor for those on lower salaries, an endemic problem in Italia as highlighted by the UPB (in yesterday’s *Sole 24 Ore*). With two pay rises in a few months, for example, local authority employees accumulate average increases of 289 euros gross per month – that is, 3,757 euros per year, representing 11.4 per cent of the salary surveyed by ARAN. In the education sector, this double increase amounts to €287 per month, and in the central public administration to €327. Figures of this kind are not enough to offset the hyperinflation of 2022/23. But they do help in the battle against rising prices; the new contracts will also include a review in July 2027 to assess any discrepancies compared with actual salaries. The push for new contracts and the resumption of recruitment are increasing expenditure on public sector staff, which, according to the latest Public Finance Document, is set to reach 211.5 billion next year – 29.5 billion above 2021 levels (+16.2 per cent). However, it must be borne in mind that, following a long period of austerity, the Italian public sector is the leanest among the major European countries (Sole 24 Ore, 24 July 2025): even after the increases, it would account for 8.8 per cent of GDP, compared with the EU average of 10.2 per cent.