Napolitano calls jobs emergency on Labour Day

Unions want 'real action', Renzi says time for 'thought'

(ANSA) - Rome, May 1 - Italian President Giorgio Napolitano called a jobs emergency on Labour Day as trade unions urged 'real action, not smiles' from the government and Premier Matteo Renzi said it was a good day for everyone to think about ways to free up the labour market to cut record unemployment.

Italy is going through a "jobs emergency" and all political and social actors must push for employment-friendly reforms, Napolitano said in his Labour Day address. Renzi's government has crafted job-creation moves including a fund for almost a million young people and labour-market reforms, some of which have been contested by trade unions. Labour Day this year should rather be called "Jobs Alarm" amid record unemployment, Napolitano said. Youth unemployment has been running at a stubborn 43% and overall unemployment at 13%, though March apparently showed a slight dip, according to preliminary figures.

The president urged trade unions to put aside grievances and misgivings and help Renzi achieve hopefully epoch-making job-creation reforms. The unions should "collaborate as much as they can" with government efforts to create jobs, said Napolitano, a former labour-market expert in the once-powerful Italian Communist Party (PCI).

Unions should help achieve "brave, innovative, determined, solidarity-based initiatives", he said in the keynote address. There has been some union resistance to major job-creation moves hatched by Matteo Renzi's government, in particular to the raising of the amount of times temporary contracts can be renewed, or people sacked, before employers are obliged to give temps steady jobs.

The government, helped by the social partners, should do much more to tackle unemployment in the poorer south of Italy, Napolitano went on. "Too little attention is paid to the alarming jobless situation in the Mezzogiorno, especially for women and young people," he said.

Since the start of the global financial crisis in 2007, the president said, the south had lost double the jobs of the richer north. The youth unemployment rate was also more than double in the south than in the north, he said.

As well as measures to lift the economy further out of its longest postwar recession, Napolitano went on, Renzi should take form action to address public disaffection after a seemingly endless stream of spending scandals. The government, he said, should attack entrenched waste, graft, perks and parasites to achieve a "transparent and productive" use of public money, as well as making those key labour-market and tax reforms, he said. Renzi's government has announced moves to tackle endemic corruption and cut crippling red tape as well as freeing up the labour market and lowering taxes to help boost growth and create jobs.

Napolitano's clarion call on youth unemployment, amid widespread reports about a lost generation, were echoed by Labour Minister Giuliano Poletti. Bringing down Italy's record youth unemployment is a priority for Renzi government, Poletti said at the Quirinale Labour Day event. "The country won't see a real recovery unless it offers fresh opportunities to those who represent our future," said Poletti, who has been negotiating with unions and employers over labour-boosting measures.

UNIONS WANT ACTION NOW, NOT 'SMILES'.

Italy's three main trade union federations on Thursday said the time for "smiles" and "announcements" was over and real, urgent action was needed on the country's "dramatic" jobs crisis.

"Enough of smiles and announcements, we need reforms that change the country to its very roots," said Susanna Camusso, head of the largest and most left-wing union, CGIL, addressing a Labour Day rally in this northern Italian city. "We need to change gears, we need a government that gets things done," said Luigi Angeletti of UIL, the third-largest union, of Socialist extraction. Raffaele Bonanni of CISL, the Christian Socialist union and second biggest, said: "basta with posing on the stage, we need clear and transparent projects".

DAY FOR REFLECTION SAYS RENZI

Labour Day is a "time for reflection on what we have to do to create jobs," Renzi said. Italy's youngest-ever premier told the weekly l'Europa that it was not easy to rid Italy of decades of accumulated red tape and other brakes on business. "It's not easy," he said, a day after postponing key reforms of the public sector. "A strong modernising action cannot be achieved top-down and can't be done in a day, or even a month," Renzi went on. "We need initiative from all, an aware participation and sharing of ideas". That did not mean "a return to the past, however, he stressed, when it took "ages" to hammer out backroom deals with unions and employers.

Renzi has already said he will go over the heads of the social partners to achieve the reforms Italy desperately needs, irking the unions in particular who have said their input is "indispensable". "We can't repeat the script of the past," Renzi said, "with the extremely long times of traditional politics and infinite negotiations. "But we have to say: let's move, institutions, community, nation. "That is why we need this May Day to gather together and reflect on what we are doing and what we mean to do".

NEW PROGRAMME TO HELP NEETS.

The Italian version of an EU plan to help young people Not in Education, Employment or Training (NEETs) kicked off on Labour Day. The European NEETs programme spans the ages of 15 to 24 but Renzi's government has decided to extend it up to 29 years of age. The National Youth Guarantee Programme earmarks more than 1.5 billion euros for the two years 2014-2015 and aims to offer young people a "qualitatively valid" prospect of work, apprenticeship, education, self-employed business or national (non-military) service. "The potential target of young people is around one million," said Labour Minister Poletti. "The Youth Guarantee program is the first bridge to the future for recent graduates and NEETS, who have dropped off the radar", said Poletti. "Staying home without taking action is just not an option," he added. "We must give everyone an opportunity".

Italy has the highest proportion of NEETS in Europe, with almost a quarter of 15-to-29-year-olds not in education, employment or training. National statistics agency said in its annual report last year that 2.25 million 15-to-29-year-olds were NEETs in 2012, 23.9% of the total, an increase of 100,000 on 2011.

The percentage of people in this age group considered part of the workforce - in that they are not in education and are actively seeking a job - who are unemployed was 25.2% in 2012, compared to 20.5% in 2011. The number of 15-to-29-year-olds who were studying in 2012 was stable at around four million, 41.5%.

PEACEFUL DEMOS EXCEPT FOR TURIN, PICNICS AROUND COUNTRY

Thursday saw peaceful demonstrations for jobs around the country and the traditional workers' celebrations including mega-concerts in Taranto and at Rome's historical leftwing rallying point, Piazza San Giovanni, featuring liberally inclined headliners. But the demos took an ugly turn in Turin, where anti-capitalist protesters clashed with police. Police said "several" 'antagonist' demonstrators, who included long-time protesters against a new high-speed France-Italy train line north of Turin, were arrested. Seven police officers suffered cuts and bruises while one security-police official was hit over the head with a pick-axe handle. Police said they seized iron bars and sticks from the demonstrators.

Many Italians simply enjoyed their day off picnicking or making escursions to see the sights. One in four Italians opted for a picnic or barbecue on Labour Day Thursday, farmers' association Coldiretti said. "We reckon some two million Italians are having a bite and a drink with friends in the open air," they said.

Millions of Italians took to the road and rails with art cities like Rome, Florence and Venice favourite destinations. "Art and cultural sites are being taken by storm, as well as the countryside," Coldiretti said on the basis of figures supplied by the Ixè polling agency. Other tourist getaways like the Cinque Terre and the Amalfi Coast, as well as the islands of Capri and Ischia, boasted a record influx, according to initial estimates.