"The meal voucher system is collapsing and if there is not an immediate turnaround, almost three million public and private employees could be denied the possibility of paying for lunch or shopping with tickets ". This is what the trade associations Fipe Confcommercio, Federdistribuzione, ANCC Coop, Confesercenti, FIDA and ANCD Conad warn.
"We have reached a limit point of endurance," they say in a conference where "we are ready to stop taking meal vouchers" without reform.
The associations explain that " the commissions have become too expensive, unsustainable for the exhibitors ". Accepting tickets "is now a loss", they underline. "An operator sells products and services for a value of 8 euros but collects 6.18 and adding to these commissions other financial charges, on meal vouchers worth 10 thousand euros, the merchants are reduced by 3 thousand euros", they point out and therefore "the whole system will have to be called into question".
"By autumn" there will have to be a reform of the meal voucher system, the government associations that have gathered today at the Confcommercio headquarters ask the government, also illustrating the actions they will put in place. "Today a communication starts" to the Ministry of Labor and that of Economic Development, so "we are waiting to be called by the government to start the discussion". Furthermore, "from today we will also start to inform the people who frequent our stores because in the end those who could seriously lose us in this matter are the consumers", they add, underlining that "it will depend a lot on what the government will decide, if it will listen to us or less".