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Minimum wage: what Europe has decided and what Italy will do

2 years ago babelfish

Minimum wage: what Europe has decided and what Italy will do

All you need to know about the minimum wage after the agreement between the European Commission, the European Parliament and the European Council on the proposed directive

The European Commission, the European Parliament and the European Council (the Trilogue) have reached an agreement on the proposed directive on " a fair minimum wage ". This does not mean that the time for the European minimum wage has come, but that the first step has been taken on a path already traced in the document of January 2020 with which the European Commission had opened the debate on the issue.

WHAT IS THE MINIMUM WAGE

The minimum wage is a minimum value set by law by the states that provide for it. In 21 of the 27 European countries there is a minimum wage. In Italy there is no generalized minimum wage but, as a rule, collective agreements set these thresholds for each category of workers. Those workers for whom there are no national collective agreements remain outside

WHAT THE TRILOGUE HAS DECIDED

The Trilogue approved a proposal for a directive which provides that countries with a minimum wage must provide for a control system for governance and the updating of the minimum wage. The directive sets out the requirements for ensuring a decent income through a legal minimum wage or collective bargaining between workers and employers and there is no obligation to choose one or the other path, just as there is no legal act. dominion over salary levels. Therefore, states that already provide for a minimum wage were asked to create a framework in which to frame the legislation, in order to set clear criteria for monitoring its effectiveness. After this agreement the text will return to the Labor and Social Affairs Commission and then back to plenary. The publication in the Official Journal will come with the go-ahead from the EU Council of Labor Ministers convened for June 16 in Luxembourg. The directive, once approved, will be binding in its objective : the existence of a living wage across the EU (whether it is a minimum wage enshrined in law or the result of collective bargaining). Member States will have two years to transpose it.

LEVELS OF THE MINIMUM WAGE

The European institutions have requested that indicative levels for the minimum wage be identified. In the press conference on 7 June , the European Commissioner for Labor and Social Rights and Parliament's rapporteurs explicitly referred to 60% of the median wage . This is not an obligation (there are no obligations in the Trilogue decisions) but only a reference value. The level of the minimum wage will then have to be periodically updated, also through dialogue with the social partners, precisely because the aim is to guarantee a decent standard of living.

THE RETURN OF THE ESCALATOR?

The "sliding scale" is a wage policy tool that makes it possible to adjust wages to inflation in order to protect their purchasing power. It was introduced in Italy in 1945, cut in 1984 and eliminated in 1992. The "escalator" had the defect of fueling the inflationary spiral that was raging in our country, eroding precisely the purchasing power it wanted, instead, to protect. In the directive on the minimum wage , the Commission, the Council and the EU Parliament have approved the introduction of a kind of "sliding scale" which in Europe they call "A utomatic indexation ". The first, enormous difference with the Italian instrument is that the European indexation refers only to the minimum wage and not to all wages, to preserve the survival capacity of those who receive the minimum wage. The Luxembourg Commissioner for Labor, Nicolas Schmit, who came from the ranks of the PSE, wanted to insert this option in the text, as reported by Repubblica .

EUROPEAN MINIMUM WAGE: THE COMPETENCE OF THE STATES

The introduction of the minimum wage will not translate into an equal minimum wage in all European states. It should be remembered that the competence in this matter remains in the hands of the States because the Treaties prohibit the EU Commission from legislating on remuneration matters. This means that the individual States will decide to introduce a minimum wage level by law , of the amount they deem appropriate (following the indications of the Commission). This process is not new, it applies to all legislative matters in which there is the superordinate competence of the Member States.

THE ROLE OF COLLECTIVE BARGAINING

A second important aspect is the role of collective bargaining which, as recognized by the European draft law, plays “ a fundamental role for the protection guaranteed by an adequate minimum wage ”. In countries where collective coverage is high, there are fewer low-wage workers and higher minimum wages than the median wage, lower wage inequalities, higher wages. However, legal minimum wages are still too low: standing at around 60% of the median gross wage or 50% of the average gross wage in almost all EU states where they exist. According to the indications of the Trilogue, EU countries with a collective bargaining coverage rate of less than 80% (Parliament wanted 90%, the Council and the EU Commission had indicated 70%) will have to draw up an action plan to promote it, adopting measures that facilitate the involvement of the social partners.

WHERE IS THE MINIMUM WAGE IN EUROPE

The legal minimum wage currently exists in 21 countries. Italy, Austria, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Cyprus are not included in the “minimum wage club”, countries in which collective bargaining is widespread. The differences between the EU countries are considerable: they range from € 332 per month in Bulgaria to € 2,202 in Luxembourg . Furthermore, in Europe, there are legal minimum wages of less than one thousand euros in 13 countries (East, Baltics, Greece, Portugal); between a thousand and 1,500 in two (Slovenia and Spain) and over 1,500 in the rest of the 21 states with the legal minimum. A few days ago, Germany raised its minimum wage to € 12 per hour.

THE MINIMUM WAGE IN ITALY

A series of proposals are firm in the Italian Parliament, two of which advanced by the Democratic Party and one by the Five Star Movement, for the introduction of the minimum wage also in Italian legislation. To these was added the hypothesis proposed by the Minister of Labor Orlando to extend the application of the overall remuneration of the most representative contracts in a sector to all workers in that sector. According to INPS data, over 5 million employees earn less than a thousand euros a month and 4.5 million are paid less than 9 euros gross per hour. The INPS president Tridico had indicated that in Italy over 2 million workers receive 6 euros gross per hour.

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/salario-minimo-cosa-ha-deciso-leuropa-e-cosa-fara-litalia/ on Tue, 07 Jun 2022 11:17:48 +0000.