L’articolo verrà pubblicato nel numero di giugno di Lavoro Diritti Europa

The paper begins by giving account of the increasing number of working poors in Italy, which is linked to the reduced impact and coverage of collective agreements, particularly in some sectors.
It argues for the need to define more precise criteria of representativeness of both bargaining agents; by agreement in the first place, but also with legislative support in order to assure compliance of the criteria by all social parties.
A useful contribution to the bargaining system comes from the act 50/2016 art 30, according to which to all workers employed following public procurements must be applied the sectoral collective agreements related to the objective content of the enterprise activity. This norm prohibits the elusive practice of applying collective agreements related to sectors where wages and working confirms are particularly low.
The paper analyses the positions of the Italian social social parties who are reluctant to accept a legislation on minimum wages and are more inclined to rely on collective bargaining. It argues that in order to comply with the proposed European directive, the minimum wages fixed by national agreements should be given binding nature particularly in those sectors where the agreements do not guarantee a full coverage and effective compliance.
The last paragraph argues for the necessity to extend basic protections to self employed workers, including minimum wages, either by agreement or lacking agreements by some kind of binding standards.