Citizenship income, here’s how it could change

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Throwing the stone into the puddle was the prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, who, for the first time, opened the possibility of modifying the income of the citizens, the active and anti-poverty policy measure, the M5S flag, which has already entered into force. a year and a half. “The project of insertion in the world of work linked to the income of citizenship still sees us behind – said the Prime Minister in recent days, speaking at the Trento Economy Festival -. I have already had two meetings with the relevant ministers: we must complete this other pole and we must also reorganize a kind of network to offer a process of training and retraining to workers. Conte’s hope is to create this link with the work “already in the first months of 2021”.

Adaptation of supply and demand for employment

What Conte thinks is “a network to offer a training and retraining process to workers”. It would represent a step forward in filling the main gap in the Five Star measure banner, namely the lack of measures for reintegration into the world of work. But at the same time it would allow for more effective monitoring: by having regional job center systems communicate with a single national “brain”, it will be possible to better match recipients with job offers, checking who rejects offers, losing the right to check. In fact, the law states that anyone who rejects one of the three suitable job offers received will lose the check. A mechanism that “for now” remains as it is, according to qualified government sources: it is not ruled out that the Covid emergency, in short, may shuffle the cards.

Few contracts signed

After all, the critical point of citizenship income has always been the link (never detached) with the labor market. Since mid-July, the “conditionality”, previously suspended due to the coronavirus emergency, has been active again; and also the navigators (2,846 units as of July 28) are returning to the employment centers that have reopened, after having benefited from smart work. According to the latest data from the INPS, the recipients of citizen income have exceeded the quota of 3 million people, which is equivalent to more than 1.3 million households, with an average monthly amount received around 520 euros (compared to January there was an increase in beneficiaries of 25%). More than 700/800 thousand income recipients of the citizenship, have made it known in recent days by Anpal, have activated and signed a pact for work.

The proposed modifications to the Pd

The point, however, is that the activation and, therefore, the labor insertion route are traveling at a much slower speed: based on the latest data collected by the monitoring system of the Ministry of Labor (updated on July 7 of 2020), 196 thousand people are beneficiaries of the citizenship income, directed to the employment centers, who have an active employment relationship after the acceptance of the benefit application, equivalent to 22% of the people subject to the signature of the employment contract and 18.7% of the total number of people sent to employment centers. Of the 196 thousand beneficiaries who have an employment relationship, even as of July 7, 100 thousand were still active in politics, and a portion of the same majority had also moved in the income of the citizens. For months, the Democratic Party has been asking to “improve” the tool, which in fact puts pressure on the government’s ally and, in particular, on the Minister of Labor, Nunzia Catalfo, to connect the measure more and better to employment, for example, removing current “disincentives” to work and placing much better employment agencies alongside public employment centers.

Effects on other subsidies

The opening of citizens’ income to effective work could represent the “trick” to review a little all the income support tools and make them a little less “welfare” and more “active”. This is the case of social safety nets, the other major reform that the government is studying, which should really be oriented towards employment and the requalification of people (but to date the commission of experts appointed last July by Nunzia Catalfo has not has still formalized its own proposals).