Promote reflection on the current difficulties of the artisan sector and at the same time ensure necessary actions to face the future, among these new regional agreement and the new sectoral welfare measures to meet the needs of artisan companies, to protection of employees and to creation of new employment.
This is one of the threads that characterized the debate that animated the celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Calabria Bilateral Crafts Association (Ebac) in Reggio Calabria.
In 2009, there were 6,085,105 companies registered in the Chamber of Commerce system; the most recent data from Unioncamere, updated to 06.30.24, reports 5,923,648 companies.
“We have left too many companies in the field – comment the Ebac leaders – and craftsmanship is the sector that has felt the hardest hit in this ‘entrepreneurial winter’. As many as 216,417 artisan businesses lost, going from 1,478,224 in 2009 to 1,261,807 in the first half of 2024. At a percentage level, craftsmanship, which previously represented 24.3 percent of the total businesses in the Italian economic fabric, has fallen to 21.3 percent. The dramatic loss of artisan businesses has affected all of Italy, proportionally affecting all territories, even regions such as Piedmont and Veneto where artisan businesses were a third of the total”.
“It is clear – they add – that a timely intervention is needed, a shock therapy so to speak to reverse the now consolidated trend and relaunch the sector. There are various measures that the social partners, constituting the Bilateral Body for Calabria Crafts, intend to use by exercising the role of bargaining in the sector in the House of Bilaterality which, in addition to being the institutional headquarters for the protection of artisan work, both for owners and for employees, provided for by the Institution’s Service Charter, has become the negotiating place where to meet and negotiate” .
“The inter-confederal inter-category agreement on Calabria craftsmanship recently signed, it takes on a strategic value in this context for the entire artisan sector and at the same time a preparatory activity in favor of regional bargaining between employers and the trade union categories representing workers belonging to the various artisan production sectors. The role of trade union relations was also strengthened – they explain – with the establishment of the “Negotiating Coordination of the Social Partners” who will also take on tasks of Permanent observatory with respect to regional contractual agreementsboth confederal and sectoral, and will promote innovation in productive organizational models with the provision of new employment to safeguard the existing one by supporting it with continuous training processes”.
The negotiating elements reached with the agreement are:
- Extension of welfare coverage to all workers in the artisan sector;
- Enhancement and use of social safety net agreements;
- Supplementary welfare as part of the incentive for regional second level bargaining;
- Contractual opportunities for businesses and employment with territoriality and production as reference;
- Obligation to apply the regional supplementary labor contract as a contractual consequence of the national collective labor contract;
- Application of the agreement to Calabrian artisan companies that apply one of the CCNL signed by the parties who signed the AIIR, confirming all the signed sector agreements and referring to them for any additions to both the economic and regulatory parts;
- Commitment to promoting regularity in the procurement system and legality, starting from the correct application of the CCNL and CRL;
- Support in corporate crisis conditions through the tools provided by the Artisan Bilateral Solidarity Fund and Fondartigianato respectively for income support and professional training;
- Enhancement of the role of the basin union delegate and, where present, that of the RSU and RSA, together with the territorial commissions established within the employers’ associations;
- Apprenticeship as a tool to encourage the entry of young people into the world of artisan work, with the request to the Calabria Region in favor of basic professional training and safety in the workplace (issues that will be addressed by a specific Bilateral Commission );
- Increase of 3.35 euros per month per employee for 12 months of the quota foreseen for contractual welfare, providing that the greater resources will be allocated to regional income support benefits approved by Ebac and for cases of serious accidents by feeding the planned Regional Supplementary Fund;
- Increase in the additional remuneration element, in favor of the worker of companies not adhering to and not paying for bilateralism, equal to five euros per month in addition to thirty euros already provided for by the national agreements.