Employment pact agreed for Catania

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In February 2001, the social partners signed an employment pact for the Italian city of Catania, in Sicily. The agreement aims to encourage the creation of new companies and of jobs, and to make precarious employment more stable.

An important employment pact for the city of Catania (Sicily) was signed on 9 February 2001, following a process of consultation and dialogue ("concertation") among the local social partners and other parties.

Catania is one of the main provinces of Sicily and its economy is characterised, like the majority of southern provinces, by a major illegal, underground economy, high unemployment (which also affects groups such as women with a high educational level), and organised crime which is deeply rooted in the local social and productive fabric. However, by contrast, one of the world's leading technology companies, STMicroelectronics, has important plants and research centres in the city.

The very high unemployment rate in the province encouraged the social partners to sign the new employment pact. The signatories of the pact represent almost all the local social, productive and administrative actors: local trade unions affiliated to the Cgil, Cisl, Uil and Ugl confederations; employers' associations; the local university; the National Institute for Social Insurance (Istituto nazionale di previdenza sociale, Inps); the National Board for Insurance against Accidents at Work (Istituto Nazionale per l'Assicurazione contro gli Infortuni sul Lavoro, Inail); the Equal Opportunities Council; representatives of the "third" social economy sector; the local employment office and labour inspectorate; cooperatives; training organisations; Sviluppo Italia and Italia Lavoro (national agencies for public economic intervention for Italy's southern regions); and representatives of municipal and provincial government.

The agreement has three main objectives:

1. to help create new companies;

2. to facilitate the access to the labour market of people facing difficulties in integration or reintegration into the labour market; and

3. to find a stable position for all workers in the area who are currently in a precarious employment situation.

In order to achieve these objectives, the partners intend to:

• promote the integration of training policies into labour market policies and to promote continuous training to facilitate the adaptation of skills and the development of new technologies;

• launch initiatives to fight the underground economy and illegal work; and

• establish permanent rules for local concertation.

The partners, in order to promote the creation of new companies, have decided to:

• create a specific "one-stop" office (sportello unico) to help all companies which are willing to invest in the area to conclude within 90 days all the necessary bureaucratic procedures;

• inform national and international investors about the opportunities offered by the employment pact;

• develop partnerships between southern and northern Italian companies in order to transfer new productive activities to southern regions;

• to encourage, through the creation of a "credit observatory", the financial support of banks for investors. To this end, the agreement has set up a fund of ITL 1 billion to give credit to small companies, and of ITL 200 million to support the creation of new cooperatives;

• encourage the creation of non-profit organisations;

• promote the development of agreements to regularise the situation of companies currently operating in an irregular manner;

• relaunch artisanal activities typical of the area; and

• identify and make available all those areas that could host new entrepreneurial activities. The municipality will provide the necessary infrastructures for these areas.

The pact underlines the importance of vocational requalification both for job-seekers and for companies that need to meet their training needs. A percentage of the resources provided for by the agreement (ITL 1 billion) will be allocated to targeted training activities, aimed at meeting local training needs, which will be identified through a forward-looking analysis. Vocational training centres and institutes will be involved in all activities linked to new technologies and to the local university. Each year a conference on training will be organised to examine progress and, if needed, plan new initiatives. Other key points of the pact include the following:

• the partners commit themselves to publicising measures to promote women's entrepreneurship through various local activities. To this end, the Equal Opportunities Council will draft every year a report on this subject;

• in order to enlarge the employment base and stabilise precarious forms of employment, the partners have agreed to have recourse to flexible employment practices. The trade unions declare themselves willing to negotiate subjects such as flexible working time and work organisation where there are productive investments which can create new jobs;

• the employers' associations commit themselves to fully implementing company-level collective bargaining, as established by the national intersectoral agreement on incomes policy and bargaining structures (IT9803223F);

• the municipal authorities commit themselves to relaunching a "labour market observatory;" and

• concertation will be strengthened through the creation of a coordination committee composed of one representative of each signatory. The committee will monitor and verify the application of the pact and promote and coordinate new initiatives.

The funds allocated for the pact by the municipal authorities amount to ITL 4.5 billion (EUR 2.3 million). Out of this figure, ITL 3.5 billion (EUR 1.8 million) will be used to finance the various activities foreseen by the pact and ITL 1 billion (EUR 516,000) will be used to re-employ workers made redundant following company restructuring. The objective of the latter initiative is to find a stable job for 780 workers who are presently involved in the "socially useful activities" labour market scheme.

The agreement was welcomed by the local trade union organisations. The provincial secretaries general of Cisl and Cgil, Salvatore Leotta and Franco Garuffi, stressed the importance of the pact, "which has taken into account the different approaches of Cgil, Cisl and Uil, and has permitted them to find a united solution". Luigi Angeletti, the general secretary of Uil, said that the fact that the pact had been signed by the centre-right municipal council attested the autonomy of trade unions.