- The Minimum Wage
The minimum wage is in its operational aspect a labour market regulation. In its purpose, it is a policy for alleviating poverty, more precisely in-work poverty. The right to a decent / fair minimum wage, or according to another common label, to a ‘living wage’, is well represented at any level of labour law sources. It is recognized by international law, including the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is provided by national laws in almost every country in the world. As far as Italian law is concerned, the right to a fair minimum wage has been granted in a very peculiar way. Italy does not have neither a statutory minimum wage, nor a system for declaring collective agreements to be of universal application. As a rule, minimum wages are determined mainly by industry-wide collective agreements, legally binding only for employers affiliated to signatory Employers’ Organizations. However, case-law has been able to extend minimum wages provided by those collective agreements to almost all employees, irrespective of whether the employer is bound by the agreement or not. Nevertheless, the ‘Italian way’ to minimum wage has been facing increasing problems due to several factors. Against this background, it is in my view high time for statutory law to provide a minimum wage also in Italy. I have explored the arguments about the economic, social and, above all, legal effects related to the adoption of a statutory minimum wage policy, and whether it is likely to be helpful or harmful to in-work poverty and to industrial relations.
- Social Protection for gig-economy workers
According to a wide-spread definition, the so-called gig-economy refers mainly to two forms of work: crowdwork and work-on-demand via app. They both involve the performance of services run by online platforms in a (relatively) new work paradigm, where workers operate in a triangular relationship with customers and online intermediaries. Basically, it is a way of outsourcing tasks through online platforms able to match workers with customers. Gig-economyworking conditions are under threat, mainly because the workers are considered as independent contractors rather than employees. Therefore they are outside the scope of labour law. Finding a way for granting to gig-economy workers basic social protection might represent a way of sharing profits between platforms and its workers in a more equitable manner.
- A new EU social action post-crisis and post-Brexit
Working conditions have been under pressure during the crisis, especially because the EU mainstream economic policies aimed at austerity and internal devaluation. Since the crisis is over and the asset of the EU is going to change soon because of the Brexit, it is probably time to think on a new social action by the EU. The European Commission initiative "European Pillar of Social Rights" is the most relevant in that sense.
