European Trade Union Committee for Education

On 28 November 2015, a big demonstration took place in Rome. The Italian trade unions, CGIL, CISL and UIL, decided to organise this protest after the Government had presented the draft financial budget law for 2016.

Despite many suggestions and proposals for changes, the Government chose to ignore the social partners and the other organizations requiring more rights for public sector workers.

More than 30.000 people decided to protest asking for the renewal of the public sector national agreement that expired six years ago and, among other things, an important intervention from the government to lift up the conditions of the Italian university system.

In a press release, the trade unions said to be seriously worried about the situation since the government did not welcome any of the trade unions’ proposals.

The draft financial budget law risks to even worsen the situation. The only expected changes concerning the employment policy may have negative effects. Five hundred professors will be employed using an ad hoc fund addressed to finance only merit-based university chairs. Now, there is the risk of creating a second-channel employment system in competition with the main one. The drafted law foresees also the end of the block for the hiring of a certain group of researchers but at the same time no guarantees about their working conditions: there is the risk of creating thousands of temporary flexible workers.

In addition, also the additional financial provision from Italian Government is totally unsatisfying: only five millions are not sufficient to guarantee a quality university education system.