Negotiations on transposing fixed-term work Directive fail

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Negotiations among the Italian social partners on the transposition of the 1999 EU Directive on fixed-term work ended without results in March 2001. On 9 March, the minister of labour officially closed the negotiations, which had already been compromised by the decision of the Cgil trade union confederation to leave the bargaining table.

In July 1999, the EU Council of Ministers adopted Directive 1999/70/EC concerning the framework agreement on fixed-term work concluded by the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), the Union of Industrial and Employers' Confederations of Europe (UNICE) and the European Centre of Enterprises with Public Participation and of Enterprises of General Economic Interest (CEEP) (EU9905170F). In March 2000, Italy's Confindustria employers' confederation and Cgil, Cisl and Uil trade union confederations entered into negotiations to find an agreement on the national transposition of the fixed-term work Directive. The deadline for the signature of an agreement was fixed as July 2000 by the government, but this was later extended.

Fixed-term employment contracts are used less in Italy than in most other EU countries, because they are subject to particularly restrictive regulations, laid down in both laws and national sectoral collective agreements. There are seven main laws which regulate this subject, with the oldest being law 230/1962 and the latest being law 196/1997. Sectoral agreements establish the permitted reasons for using fixed-term contracts, the proportion of a company's workforce that can be employed on such contracts (as a percentage of those on open-ended contracts), and the duration of the contracts.

On 27 November 2000, the intersectoral fixed-term work negotiations seemed to have reached a positive conclusion, thanks to a proposed agreement drafted by Cgil, Cisl and Uil. On 11 January 2001, the partners also reached an oral agreement on all the items which had been raised on the bargaining table. However, on 29 January 2001, the talks ran into difficulties because the employers' delegation responsible for drawing up a text setting out the contents of the previous meeting, presented a paper which unions believed did not clarify the employers' position on the role of collective bargaining. Cgil voiced many criticisms of the document and also contested some points previously agreed, such as the permitted length of fixed-term contracts and the reasons which would allow the use of this kind of contract.

Many other meetings followed, but the positions of the employers and Cgil continued to diverge. On 5 March, the employers' representatives asked the union confederations to sign a joint request to the minister of labour to postpone the deadline for the signature of an agreement. On the same day, Cgil decided to walk out of the negotiations. The other two union confederations, Cisl and Uil, decided, by contrast, to sign the request and to continue negotiations.

On 9 March, the minister of labour, Cesare Salvi, stated that it was useless to put back the deadline for concluding an agreement, given the impossibility of finding a joint position between the parties, and sent a letter to the social partners explaining his decision. Mr. Salvi underlined three main reasons for his decision:

• the deadline for transposition of the Directive (July 2001, with a possible delay of one year to take account of special difficulties or implementation by collective agreement) allows for a resumption of negotiations in the future;

• Italy's Constitutional Court has already stated that the existing Italian regulations on fixed-term contracts are consistent with the EU Directive, and therefore this it is not a matter of filling an urgent regulatory gap; and

• given that parliament has been dissolved in advance of the general election to be held on 13 May 2001, "a governmental decree at this point would seem disrespectful of parliament's prerogatives".

The failure of the negotiations confirms, once again, the current differences among the trade union confederations and between Cgil and Confindustria (IT0102277F).

Cisl and Uil have strongly criticised Cgil's decision to walk out of the negotiations, on the grounds that this has weakened the trade unions' position. Raffaele Bonanni, the Cisl confederal secretary, wants to continue negotiations, stating that "to become discouraged now means throwing away months of hard work". Gugliemo Epifani, the Cgil vice-general secretary, on being asked to rejoin the bargaining process, said that "the invitation should be addressed to Confindustria, which should have a more correct and responsible attitude."

According to Emma Marcegaglia, Confindustria's council member responsible for European matters, "it is the Cgil trade union confederation which does not want to accept a greater liberalisation that would foster employment."