Among the commitments undertaken by Italy with the National Plan of Recovery and Resilience (PNRR), Component 1 of Mission 5, “Inclusion and Cohesion”, devoted to policies for labor, provides for the adoption by the Ministry of Labor and Social Policies of a National Plan to Combat the Shadow Economy for the three-year period 2023-2025. This plan was approved in December of last year.
What does the plan contemplate?
The Plan calls for the implementation of specific actions that serve to combat irregular employment in various sectors of the economy. It gives Italy the ability to apply a stable strategy for the first time, and valorize the roles and synergies among various levels of governance and the many stakeholders. On the side of prevention, it will take steps to combat irregular labor and assess specific policies in relation to different production sectors and regional conditions.
The implementation of the national Plan to Combat the Shadow Economy provides for the attainment of two quantitative targets:
- increasing by at least 20% the number of inspections with respect to the 2019-2021 period by the end of 2024;
- reduction of the incidence of irregular employment by at least two percentage points in the economic sectors involved in the Plan.
How does the Plan meet the commitments undertaken by Italy with the PNRR?
In line with the indications of the PNRR, the national plan to combat the shadow economy provides for actions tending to:
- refine the methods of collection and sharing of data on irregular employment to heighten awareness of the problem by all the authorities involved;
- create interinstitutional networks of cooperation, also digitally, among the authorities, with a view to sharing the data on irregular employment and fostering a more in-depth knowledge of the evolution of the phenomenon and ways to monitor and prevent its spread and also to uncover previously unknown conditions of irregularity
- introduce direct and indirect measures to transform irregular labor into regular labor, so that the benefits from operating in the regular economy exceed the costs of continuing to operate in the shadow economy;
- launch an informative campaign directed at employers and workers, with the active involvement of the social partners, in line with the most recent initiative adopted by the European Commission, to increase awareness among the recipients on the “loss of value” implicit in recourse to every form of irregular labor.
Collection of data on irregular labor
The goal is to construct an accurate and detailed picture of the phenomenon and share the information among the institutions involved. The first actions will include:
- use in statistical forms of the data collected during the activity of vigilance conducted by the National Labor Inspectorate (INL);
- a gradual sharing of data among all the parties involved in monitoring labor;
- enhancing the national shadow economy portal, to give it permanent status as the site for of collection and exchange of all relevant data, not only for statistical analysis but also for planning of activities of control and assessment of performance of the policies.
Actions
The Plan to combat irregular labor provides for a number of direct and indirect actions, with the goal of:
- improving monitoring activities, as the main direct measure, also through a more effective planning activity;
- introducing legislative tools that increase the advantage of undertaking a process of regularization (removing incentives for illegal conduct);
- accompanying and guiding the economic stakeholders from different production sectors toward the adoption of legal conduct;
- introducing actions to provide specific incentives for families that make use of domestic labor, the sector in which a very significant proportion of irregular employment occurs;
- testing measures of active policy aimed at the more fragile workers, to prevent them from becoming mired in situations of irregular labor, also in line with the provisions of the three-year plan to combat the exploitation of labor among farm workers and the people who recruit them (2020-2022).
It is important to stress here the systemic impact that the Plan has in the sphere of the broader strategy of combating all forms of irregular labor.
- We think the new instrumental processes of data collection will ensure better interoperability among the various databases. In this perspective, the Plan intends to establish a store of integrated data, through the construction of the National Shadow Economy Portal. It is a crucial aspect, also considering the labor of the institutional workers who were already operating in a variety of ways to prevent the phenomenon. Now, thanks to this interoperability, they can rely on a qualitatively more accurate level of analysis
- The increase in the activity of inspection, through a more efficient activity of vigilance and an increase in the number of inspections by at least 20% with respect to the average of the period 2019-2021. In this respect, the National Inspectorate can count on a significant increase in personnel in general
- The legislative package contemplated by the Plan is designed to guarantee a more effective system of sanctions to combat irregular and unregistered employment. For example, when it comes to contracts, with the provision of exclusion from access for companies subject to definitive inspections due to cases of irregular labor. Forms of incentives and rewards that make it effectively more advantageous to behave correctly in the management of employee relations.