Pessi: “minimum wage? Better to extend ‘erga omnes’ collective bargaining …”

“Minimum wage by law? On the one hand, a suitable instrument for 100% coverage of the world of work, but on the other, it risks reducing the space, size and impact of collective bargaining”. The labor lawyer Roberto Pessi told AdnKronos, underlining that “the best solution to solve the problem is to reach the erga omnes effectiveness of collective agreements”. A path that, according to the Luiss professor of labor law, is anything but impracticable, but not following the path of the implementation of Article 39 of the Constitution which provides for the ‘erga omnes’ extension of the collective agreements stipulated by a unitary representation of duly registered trade unions. “If we try to implement it, a whole series of complex technical problems arise. From the registration of trade unions to unitary representation, passing through the verification of the democratic statute, a series of historically divisive and technically difficult issues open up”, said Pessi. It is therefore better to focus in the perspective of the labor lawyer on a constitutional law that abolishes the II, III and IV paragraphs of Article 39 and then incorporates the content of the collective agreements with a legislative decree, extending their application to all workers. “You can follow the model of law 741 of 1959, which, on the one hand, has the advantage of leaving collective bargaining with all the autonomy to manage the negotiation, and on the other, has the advantage of extending its effectiveness through the transposition decrees with a collective agreement that is essentially a common law but which the legislator transforms into ‘erga omnes’ “, said Pessi. transposition by decree? Best solution to apply EU directive A solution that, according to the Luiss professor, is not only feasible in a climate of national unity like this one, but would also make it possible not to have problems with the EU regarding compliance with the directive on the minimum wage. “The directive would be applied perfectly, because we could say that the minimum wage is that of the collective agreements transposed into law”, said the professor who also stressed the need for a minimum wage for a considerable number of remaining workers. outside the scope of collective bargaining. “There are all a series of sectors where collective bargaining varies from 50% to 80%, with a series of workers who remain uncovered and on which action must be taken”. According to Pessi, the constitutional law amending article 39 of the Constitution would ultimately resolve the problem of the minimum wage in our legal system. “The minimum wage for our legal system has always been a problem, in the sense that the same constitutional system had imagined that the fair remuneration of Article 36 of the Constitution was entrusted to collective bargaining and not coincidentally the constitutional model provided for the registration of trade unions and the erga omnes effectiveness of collective agreements as envisaged by article 39. An intervention on paragraphs II, III and IV of that article would allow us to overcome this problem “, concluded Pessi.