What do big companies such as Enel and Luxottica have in common with other firms, such as Idealstandard and Elettromeccanica Tironi? They are the protagonists of an increasingly important part of that Italian subsidiarity that is trying to act as a system and not only as an ensemble of good practices. We are talking about “company welfare”, that policy according to which companies provide, autonomously or through Union agreements, a number of services and benefits which, in the past, were typical of social State. Actually, this is a very old practice.
Since the beginning of last century, indeed, some entrepreneurs have invested a part of their capital in services for employees and some of them even built near their factories houses and areas for leisure and daily life. These may appear as “illuminating” and maybe paternalist examples, but it is evident that such entrepreneurs understood how social security is important for economic development and how personal well-being is tightly bound to productivity.
Clearly, the reality we live in now is different. However, the recent economic and financial crisis has highlighted both the limits of current guarantee schemes and their associated risks in terms of social disintegration. Thus, the idea of giving or negotiating not only salaries, but also a number of care services, is rapidly taking root.
The range of such services is wide and includes, for instance, the creation of crèches, the provision of scholarships and school books, the introduction of parental leaves, the development of savings-pension contracts and health promotion programs, together with the possibility of providing home assistance. ATM suggests to implement within companies an actual social service dealing with social housing programs.
The last report “Il Lavoro a Milano“, carried out by Assolombarda, shows that in Lombardy the adoption of forms of company welfare is increasingly popular among large companies. This datum highlights all the limits and risks of Italian welfare system (e.g. the growth of opportunity disparity between workers and non-workers, between the employees working in big companies and those working in small firms, between citizens living in more developed and wealthier regions and those living in less rich regions). Therefore, it is necessary that all kinds of subsidiary initiatives do not replace the universal system of social rights but become integral part of it.
On the inside: