"Yes to dialogue".
"Useful comparison".
Carlo Bonomi and Maurizio Landini confirm with an exchange of tweets, after a long face to face at the CGIL 'Futura 2020' event, the desire to seek together "solutions for the country".
We start by pointing out the distances that, between Confindustria and CGIL, exist and remain large but for this very reason they give value to the desire to open a season of confrontation.
"Even in conflict, if useful", emphasizes the president of Confindustria who recalls the appeal to join a 'pact for Italy' that he had launched at the annual assembly of industrialists: "We have a great responsibility. at a table. But we do not proclaim strikes and we do not bring people to the streets because the spirits are already exasperated.
To the invitation to dialogue, the CGIL leader replies: "We are convinced that this change is either made together or not. But I see contracts more than agreements: the renewal of contracts".
Thus Landini immediately defines the perimeter of the first round between industrialists and trade unions.
Then there is the issue of the role of the government.
Is it possible to start a permanent consultation between Condindustria and CGIL from today?
"Certainly, and not only with us, the union is not just the CGIL. The important thing is that together we demand a discussion with the government, a two-way discussion is not enough", Landini replies.
Bonomi also says "yes" and replies to the Government: "He must, however, keep the referee's shirt, too often he puts on the shirt of one of the teams on the field and this is not good. To think that the Government can act as a bank for one of the two teams is not good, it is not working ".
On the contract front, the approach is mixed.
Maurizio Landini defends the capillarity of national contracts and calls for more wages and less hours: "There is a wage question in our country, we have the lowest wage levels and the highest working hours".
Carlo Bonomi, on the other hand, wants a greater push towards second-level bargaining, and with the compass steady in a precise direction: "I have always said that exchange must be wages-productivity".
For Confindustria there is a need to respond in a different way to different economic realities, because "the country is not homogeneous in its productivity characteristics, between North and South, Bonomi underlines this with a long comparison with Germany where the gap is between East and West of the country: "The difference between north and south of Italy in relation to the nominal wage is about 4.2 points.
In Germany the difference between east and west is over 28 points: they have left the possibility of very strong second-level bargaining linked to territorial productivity, this has allowed them to have an income capacity parameterized to the territory, a very real economic capacity. stronger than ours ".
Landini does not see it this way: "I insist on national contracts not because they are alternatives to corporate bargaining but because in our country we are also made up of many SMEs, and the national contract remains the tool that is able to give answers to everyone, to raise and to unify the level of quality in a general sense ".