In the heated debate over the introduction of a minimum wage in Italy, opposing visions collide: on one side, the need to protect the most vulnerable workers; on the other, the economic resilience of businesses and the balance of collective bargaining. Attorney Marco Proietti, a labor law expert, employment-law specialist, and consultant to the Ministry of Labor, offers a technical and countercurrent analysis of the real effects that a legally mandated minimum wage would have on Italy’s productive fabric.
Roberta Imbimbo
Attorney, you argue that a statutory minimum wage is not applicable in Italy because of the high tax and social-security wedge. Concretely, what would be the effects of a minimum wage set at €9 per hour on Italian small and medium-sized enterprises in terms of economic sustainability and employment?
Italy’s productive system rests on a complex equilibrium, in which collective bargaining is the keystone capable of balancing employers’ needs and labor protections. Introducing a uniform statutory minimum wage would mean grafting a rigid mechanism onto an already fragile system, where the tax and contribution wedge weighs heavily on both companies and workers. A €9-per-hour threshold imposed by law and applied across all sectors would fail to account for the profound economic and territorial differences that characterize the country. In many sectors—from retail to personal services, from crafts to hospitality—profit margins are so thin that immediate compliance would be simply unfeasible. The concrete risk would be pushing micro and small enterprises toward irregularity, not out of a desire to evade the rules, but out of economic survival. Absent structural interventions to reduce labor costs, a mandated wage increase could translate into a sharp reduction in regular hiring, an increase in fixed-term contracts, or, in the worst cases, the closure of less resilient businesses. In other words, the intention to protect workers could produce the opposite effect: compress employment and expand the shadow economy, with negative consequences for the overall competitiveness of the productive system.
You have raised concerns that a statutory minimum wage could “sideline the unions” and nullify the role of collective bargaining. How could this happen, and what would the consequences be for workers?
A significant share of labor litigation in Italy concerns pay differentials and the application of collective agreements. If a law imposed a single €9-per-hour threshold, companies would have every incentive to adhere strictly to that figure, avoiding the application of any collective agreement. In practice, once the legal minimum is met, employers could negotiate “one-to-one” with employees, guaranteeing only the standards set by law while excluding unions from the bargaining table. Unions would thus lose their central negotiating issue—wages—reducing their function to a purely symbolic role. Concertation, the true cornerstone of the Italian model, would be undermined.
If the minimum wage risks flattening pay, the alternative is to strengthen collective bargaining. How can National Collective Labor Agreements (CCNLs) be ensured to provide fair pay and prevent the use of “pirate contracts”?
There are two complementary paths. The first is to reference INPS wage tables, which capture the actual minimum pay levels across sectors and allow adjustments consistent with the cost of living. The second, more structural path is a law on union representativeness that grants erga omnes validity to collective agreements signed by truly representative organizations. Only in this way can the proliferation of so-called “pirate contracts”—signed by minor entities to lower labor costs—be prevented.
You propose a representativeness law as the key to eliminating pirate contracts and strengthening industrial relations. What pillars should it rest on to ensure effectiveness?
Two elements are needed: transparency and measurability. Data on membership numbers and the financial statements of union organizations should be made public, in order to establish who truly represents workers. This would resolve an issue left unresolved since 1949: the failure to implement Article 39 of the Constitution, paragraphs 3 and 4, which предусмотрed the registration of unions and the general validity of contracts signed by the most representative ones. The absence of this framework has produced a distortion: more than a thousand collective agreements deposited with CNEL and an unmanageable system. A representativeness law would finally provide certainty and also make second-level bargaining more effective.
In many European countries, a statutory minimum wage is well established. Why would Italy be different?
In reality, minimum pay levels already exist in Italy, but they are set by collective agreements rather than by law. The main difference compared with other European countries lies in the tax and contribution wedge: in Italy, for every net euro a worker receives, the company pays almost two. This imbalance makes a high statutory minimum wage unworkable unless taxes and social contributions are addressed first. The mistake is to believe that the problem is hourly pay; in reality, it is the fiscal burden on labor that penalizes both employees and employers. Without a decisive cut to the tax wedge, any minimum wage risks being merely symbolic—incapable of truly improving workers’ conditions.
