Staff-leasing and the destruction of workers' solidarity and unity
Thanks to Law No.30 and Decree No.276, from this week on companies will be able to offer a new form of contract enabling them to "rent" groups of workers for an indeterminate period of time, a formula known as "staff leasing". These workers for hire are offered by temp agencies which have now been turned into multi-service agencies for the provision of manpower. Groups such as Adecco or Manpower will now be looking forward to huge profits for their services to industry.
No such luck instead for the workers. They are being transformed into alienated and anonymous units of manpower and sold at market rates to this or that business. Neither should we be tricked by the expression "an indeterminate period of time"! This does not mean (as it has traditionally done with National Labour Contracts) "forever". It simply means that no termination date has been established. In fact, the contract allows for the possibility of getting rid of the entire "package" of rented workers with simply x number of days' or months' notice.
These rented workers will no longer be able to consider the company they work for as "theirs": the company will have no responsabilities towards the workers (other than those concerning the workers' safety and hygiene) despite the fact they are gaining profit from them as usual. Claims or demands will not be made to the boss you work for, but to the manpower agency, who will be the actual employer. The company considers these workers as "external" to it.
This indeterminate period of time will therefore concern only the commercial relationship between the two companies involved, who will be able to use any of the forms of contract which Law No.30 provides for with regard to the workers (on-call work, part-time, intermittent, temporary "training" contracts, etc.). Whenever the renting company is unable to hire out its human goods, and then only in the case where the worker has an "indeterminate-period" contract, the worker will receive what is called "availability benefit", in other words a monthly cheque which the government's Department of Welfare states cannot be less than a mere €350.
As far as pay is concerned, workers will receive the same rates as others in their category, but regulations will have to be provided for in an ad hoc collective national labour contract for all those entering the world of staff leasing. And this is something that will surely lead to divisions within the working class. As for the application of Article 18 of the Workers' Statute and of other labour laws, these rented workers will be ignored. If a company with fewer than 15 employees takes on 200 in staff leasing, those first 15 will continue to be unprotected by Article 18. Neither will leased workers be eligible to participate in elections for union representatives in their workplaces: their apparent boss is not their real boss, and no action can be taken by the leased workers against him. They will also be unable to elect a safety representative which will instead be assigned under the contract between the two companies.
In a similar way to temporary work (something which the centre-left parties sought), the consequences of the applications of staff leasing could be devastating for workers and for their ability to organize themselves in a solid, unitary way in the struggle against exploitation and the denial of their rights. Leasing will mean that workers will in fact be producing profit twice - once for the agency who hires them out (for profit, naturally), and once again for the company which uses them and extracts profit from their labour. The exploitation is therefore doubled while at the same time the workers will see taken from them any possibility of defence or action to protect their wages, responsibility for which passes from the workplace to the commercial contract between the supply company and the client company. Control of labour will also be doubled, in the sense that the supply agency will control the terms of employment when it stipulates the sale of the "package" of workers and the client company does likewise by dictating the places and hours of production. There derives a subordination which is equal to the exploitation and aggravates by the artificial division produced by the different relationship with the company with respect to the company's own employees.
We anarchist communists, who have always defended the aim of the working class of re-gaining control over the manual and intellectual functions of labour, and who by our political and union action support and defend solidarity and class unity, consider the struggle against the application of Law No.30 to be an integral part of the general labour struggle of all categories on a national and local level which must seek:
the sabotage of Law No.30 by denouncing and fighting off any attempt at agreement on its application between the government, businesses, supply agencies and union organizations, both signatories of the Pact For Italy and non-signatories who have changed their minds;
wage equality and equality of rights for all workers;
the establishment of self-managed grassroots groups which can represent all workers in the workplace and in the community and rebuild contractual unity, re-uniting the interests of the workers and breaking down the barriers caused by selfish individualism, corporativism and the commercialization of our lives.
Federazione
dei Comunisti Anarchici
Labour Commission
Bari, 5th August 2004