Italy's labour market reform: Jobs Act vs. Workers Act

Since the nineties, the Italian labor market has been invested by a continuous and intense reform program. Analogously to what happened in most of the European countries, such program was aimed at a substantial liberalization. This objective has been pursued introducing ‘flexibility’ in the labor market following a strictly neoliberal agenda. The main reforms have regarded the reduction of legal constraints easing the possibility of dismissals and introducing flexible job contracts in terms of both remuneration and work organization. In this paper we synthesize the principal element of change which affected the Italian labor market analyzing, in particular, the features of the recently introduced ‘Jobs Act’. Moreover, we present a brief empirical evidence depicting the dynamics of employment, productivity and wages in Italy form the nineties onwards. After summarizing the main components of the ‘Jobs Act’ we propose an alternative plan for the Italian labor market: ‘The Workers Act’. The latter – conceptualized on a non neo-liberal theoretical base - aims at creating grounds for restarting growth and competitiveness – in a sustainable way avoiding any penalization for workers.