«I read with interest the bill filed by my colleague Barbuto on the minimum wage in regional public contracts registered on 3 June 2026. I find the text largely agreeable in its contents, moreover, it substantially coincides with the one that I myself filed on 17 December last (prot. n. 25055), entitled “Protection of the minimum wage in contracts of the Calabria Region”». This is what the regional councilor and secretary of the police commissioner, Ferdinando Laghi, declares.
The technical details of the law and the 9 euro threshold
«The law that I presented six months ago commits the Region, the companies of the regional health system, the agencies, the authorities and all the regional instrumental bodies to indicate, in every tender procedure and in coherence with article 11 of the Public Contracts Code, the collective contract most relevant to the activity, stipulated by the comparatively most representative organisations. Those same subjects have the obligation to verify that the contract provides for a minimum salary equal to nine euros an hour; and, when the company declares to apply a different contract, to conduct the equivalence judgment on the twelve parameters of the annex to the procurement code, while ascertaining the mandatory threshold of nine euros. All this without a single euro of new burdens for the regional budget.”
Technical differences: constraint versus scoring
«Same threshold – underlines Laghi – same scope of application, same basic approach as the law proposed by my colleague. There is, if anything, a technical difference that I would like to point out. My proposal creates a verification obligation on the contracting authorities: the nine euros are a constraint, not a score. In any case, I am pleased that the topic convinces others too. I am less convinced by the idea that we have to start over from scratch, as if a text deposited six months ago wasn’t already lying in the commission drawers.”
The appeal to join forces to avoid bureaucratic delays
«I assume it’s an oversight, after all the Regional Council is a place crowded with papers, and not with institutional ease. But precisely for this reason I take this opportunity to remind you that my proposal exists, is registered, and has been waiting to be scheduled since December. If the shared objective is to guarantee salary dignity for Calabrian public procurement workers, the quickest way is to discuss the text already in place, which can however be modified, not to add another to the queue. I therefore invite my colleague Barbuto and all the council groups that intend to support this measure to join forces to bring the existing proposal to the commission and to the chamber as quickly as possible. Poor work in Calabria does not wait for the times of regional bureaucracy. And not even the outsourced healthcare workers, cleaning workers, maintenance workers, those for whom this law is intended.”
Availability to collaborate
«I am available – concludes Ferdinando Laghi – to any form of collaboration in the interest of Calabrian workers. I’m less happy to start from scratch every time.”