Italian govt forced into U-turn over teacher pay

Reuters/Rome

The reversal showed the growing power of Renzi, the 38-year-old mayor of Florence and a member of the same Democratic Party (PD) as Prime Minister Enrico Letta.

It also underlined the pressures facing the ruling coalition as it struggles to control Italy’s deficit and address a two-year recession.

The economy ministry wanted 100,000 teachers and school workers to give back automatic seniority salary bumps they had received in 2013 by docking 150 euros ($200) a month from their pay.

The idea was quickly attacked by Renzi, labour unions and members of the government.

“The cut to teachers is absurd. The government must fix this mess immediately,” Renzi wrote on Twitter yesterday.

Education Minister Maria Chiara Carrozza announced that she had asked Economy Minister Fabrizio Saccomanni to cancel the measure.

Deputy Prime Minister Angelino Alfano, the leader of the ruling bloc’s New Centre Right party, accused the government of shooting itself in the foot.

Shortly afterwards, the government announced that it had cancelled the plan, a possible blow for Saccomanni.

The former central banker is already under fire over the 2014 budget, which critics say does little to help growth.

Italy’s economy, the eurozone’s third biggest, has not grown since mid-2011. The unemployment rate hit a 37-year high in November, with youth joblessness topping 41%, according to figures published yesterday.

Average payment bands for teachers in Italy are between 27,000 and 30,400 euros a year before tax.

That is broadly in line with the rest of Europe, but the government has repeatedly targeted education for spending cuts in recent years.

On Tuesday, former deputy economy minister Stefano Fassina, a high-ranking PD member who resigned last week, accused Renzi of undermining the government, calling his repeated criticism of its policies “a daily round of challenges to the government’s legitimacy”.

Fassina, a prominent left-winger in the centre-left PD and a critic of Renzi, resigned on Saturday, saying that the cabinet had to be reshuffled to reflect Renzi’s sweeping victory in last month’s party primary.

He said that Renzi, who has insisted that his PD colleague Prime Minister Letta must move more quickly on reforms or accept new elections, had to be directly implicated in the successes and failures of the coalition, of which the PD is the largest member.

“There’s a problem with the Democratic Party leadership’s ambiguity towards the Letta government. It has to be cleared up once and for all,” he told Radio24 in an interview.

Fassina said Renzi’s repeated criticisms of the government for not moving quickly enough were reminiscent of centre-right leader Silvio Berlusconi’s attacks on former prime minister Mario Monti in the months leading up to last year’s election.

“A party secretary elected with such a big majority can ask for a change in the government’s approach, that’s normal. But a daily round of challenges to the government’s legitimacy is another thing entirely.

“It makes you think of Berlusconi in the final months of the Monti government,” he said.

The resignation of Fassina, who represents a significant slice of opinion in the PD, and his subsequent criticisms of Renzi have laid bare the factional tensions predicted after the 38-year-old mayor of Florence won the centre-left leadership in December, pledging to shake up the party.

As well as the PD, Letta must also negotiate with the small centrist and centre-right groups which support his coalition and which have watched the arrival of Renzi with some suspicion.

Although Renzi is not in the government, he has promised an overhaul of the widely criticised electoral system and a new “Jobs Act” expected to focus on a more flexible form of contract for younger workers with fewer hiring and firing restrictions but more support for the unemployed.